Part 2

Kenyans go to the polls on Dec 27, 2007. The mood of the electorate is one of betrayal, disappointment and anger. What is happening in Kenya is a carbon-copy of what has transpired elsewhere in Africa.

Africa’s post colonial story has been a truculent tale of one perfidious betrayal after another. Most Africans affirm that true freedom never came to most of Africa in the 1960s. Independence was in name only. Africans traded one set of masters (white colonialists) for another set (black neo-colonialists.) Oppression and exploitation of the African people continued unabated. The standard of living of the Mwananchi steadily deteriorated as the liberation heroes settled in to rule.

In most countries, they imposed one-party state system on their people and declared themselves “presidents-for-life.” Grand state-led plans were unveiled to develop their respective countries. State enterprises were hastily and haphazardly established and packed with political supporters, sycophants, and tribesmen. Swelling state bureaucracies became riddled with inefficiency and corruption. By 1990, civil service salaries were taking up half the budget in Kenya. In the end, the ruling elites only helped themselves -- by “developing” their pockets. The people were left to eat grass. According to former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, corrupt African leaders have stolen at least $140 billion (£95 billion) from their people since independence.  In Kenya, anti-corruption czar John Githongo's team traced an estimated $5 billion of misappropriated public funds to various accounts, assets and properties in Europe and the United States. According to a report by Kroll and Associates, Sh130 billion had been stashed abroad by key personalities in the KANU administration.

In the 1970s, a rash of coups swept across West Africa, tossing out of office crocodile liberators, unrepentant kleptocrats and briefcase bandits. The soldiers were determined to clean house, establish some standards of accountability and transparency. But, alas, they too fell victim to the temptations of autocracy and self-enrichment. They ruined one economy after another with brutal efficiency and looted one treasury after another with military discipline. Another round of betrayal.

Following the collapse of the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s, the “winds of change” swept across Africa, tossing out of power long-standing autocrats. Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia was one such casualty, replaced by Frederick Chiluba. Now he has been indicted for corruption – another betrayal. In 2002, his ex-wife, Vera Chiluba, sued him for $2.5 billion – about three-quarters of the country's Gross Domestic Product - as part of a divorce settlement. Vera Chiluba said her former husband could afford such a settlement and that she could prove it. Chiluba’s finance minister, Katele Kalumba, who had been on the run for four months, was arrested and charged in connection with some $33 million that vanished while he was in office.

Following the sea of change in the early 1990s were such rebel leaders as Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Isaiah Afwerki of Eritrea, Laurent Kabila of DR Congo, and Paul Kagame of Rwanda. On his 1998 historic trip to Africa, former U.S. president, Bill Clinton, hailed them as the “new leaders” of Africa taking charge of Africa’s own backyard. But, alas, as it turned out, they were just old wine in new bottles: crackpot democrats and reform acrobats. Back in 1986, President Museveni declared that no African leader should be in power for more than 10 years. He is still there – 20 years and counting. As the average African would say: “We struggle very hard to remove one cockroach from power and the next rat comes to do exactly the same thing!”

By the mid-1990s, what is known as “government” had effectively ceased to exist in most African countries. In its place was a “vampire” or a “mafia state,” where the government had been hijacked by a phalanx of bandits and crooks who used the state machinery to enrich themselves, their cronies and tribesmen only. The richest persons in Africa are heads of state and ministers and, quite often, the chief bandit is the head of state himself. Eventually the “vampire state” metastasizes into a “coconut republic” and implodes when politically-excluded groups rise up in rebellion: Somalia (1993), Rwanda (1994), Burundi (1995), Zaire (1996), Sierra Leone (1998), Liberia (1999), Ivory Coast (2000), and Togo (2005).

A “coconut republic” is where crooks are in charge and their victims in jail. The rule of law is turned on its head. Common sense is butchered and arrogant idiocy rampages with impunity. It is a “republic” where: Cabinet ministers sing like parrots and boogie to the tune of the president in power. The police protect the ruling bandits! If you told them that you saw a cabinet minister stealing the people’s money, it is you the police would arrest!! Asked to find the murderers of Foreign Minister Robert Ouko, Kenyan police investigators claimed that he “broke his own leg, shot himself in the head and set himself afire. They also suggested that a British tourist, Julie Ward, lopped off her own head and one of her legs before setting herself aflame.

In a coconut republic, money stolen from the people is recovered and then quickly relooted! (Nigeria). Poverty is reduced by arresting and eliminating the poor, according to Uganda’s Agriculture Minister, Kibirige Ssebunya The country runs out of paper with which to print money and the government tames hyperinflation by banning price increases (Zimbabwe). The rulers claim they are fighting “terrorists” when they themselves are the real state terrorists (Liberia, Sudan, Uganda, Somalia). Charles Taylor of Liberia once had an “anti-terrorism unit” run by his son. Even the warlords of Somalia “formed what they call an anti-terrorism coalition.”

In a coconut state, the head of state, for example Yahya Jammeh of Gambia, declares that anyone aspiring to his job needs "to wait like a vulture, patiently," because he plans to stay in office at least 30 years longer. The police mercilessly beat up unarmed, innocent civilians with salacious relish but show their courage by fleeing from armed adversaries.         

Only real constitutional reform will save such coconut republics from implosion. The leadership and the ruling vampire elites are however not interested, period. Under pressure from Western donors to reform their abominable systems, they will only implement the barest minimal cosmetic reform that would keep foreign aid flowing. Ask them to cut bloated state bureaucracies or government spending and they will set up a “Ministry of Less Government Spending.” Ask them to establish better systems of governance and they will set up a “Ministry of Good Governance” (Tanzania). Ask them to curb corruption and they will set up an “Anti-Corruption Commission” with no teeth and then sack the Commissioner if he gets too close to the fat cats (Kenya). Ask them to establish democracy and they will empanel a coterie of fawning sycophants to write the electoral rules, toss opposition leaders into jail, hold fraudulent elections and return themselves to power (Ivory Coast, Rwanda). Ask them to place more reliance on the private sector and they will create a Ministry of Private Enterprise (Ghana). Ask them to privatize inefficient state-owned enterprises and they will sell them off at fire-sale prices to their cronies (Uganda).

The reform process has stalled through vexatious chicanery, strong-arm tactics, willful deception, and vaunted acrobatics. Only 16 out of the 54 African countries are democratic and fewer than 8 African countries are “economic success stories.” Intellectual freedom remains in the Stalinist era: only 8 African countries have a free and independent media. But without genuine reform, more African countries will implode. Africa is stuck in a veritable conundrum.

Kenyans went to the polls in droves in 2002 to elect Mwai Kibaki. They wanted reform and change: an end to autocratic rule, a reform of the dysfunctional state apparatus, an end to corruption, revival of the moribund economy and an end to ethnic division, extreme inequality, and spreading poverty. But, alas, five years later, Kibaki has turned out to be another reform acrobat -- one step forward; three steps back and flip sideways. The Kibaki kibanjie is a trail of broken promises. He promised constitutional reform in 100 days. It was pushed back to 6 months. Then, never mind. A draft constitution was produced on March 15, 2004 and then subsequently evaporated.

To be sure, the Kibaki administration achieved some early successes. Upon taking office, his government immediately honored its promise of free universal primary education. Commissions were set up to probe historical misdeeds, including the 1989 murder of Foreign Affairs Minister Robert Ouko, land theft, the possible establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission, and the abuse of Kenya's self-help (Harambee!) development process. An attempt was made to clean up Kenya’s judiciary system. The Chief Justice was forced to resign and more than 50 judges removed from the bench.  Some basic liberties were restored and Kenyans felt a little “freer.”  The economy began to grow after years of stagnation – humming along at 6 percent rate of growth. But subsequent litany of failures dwarfed these early successes. With his laid-back management style, he allowed his free-wheeling ministers to reduce governance to a farce.

The former president, Daniel arap Moi, had turned Kenya into a “coconut republic,” where government officials were supposed to be “nyayo” and blindly follow in his “footsteps,” singing like parrots. In a speech on Sep 13, 1984 after his return from Addis Ababa, Moi, according to the Nation newspaper, said:

"During Mzee Kenyatta's period, I persistently sang the Kenyatta tune until people said: This fellow has nothing to say, except to sing for Kenyatta. I said: I did not have ideas of my own. Who was I to have my own ideas? I was in Kenyatta's shoes, and therefore, I had to sing whatever Kenyatta wanted. If I had sung another song, do you think Kenyatta would have left me alone? Therefore you ought to sing the song I sing. If I put a full stop, you should put a full stop. This is how the country will move forward. The day you become a big person, you will have the liberty to sing your own song and everybody will sing it" (Index on Censorship, July 1990; p. 17).

Under pressure from the IMF, Kenya's President Daniel arap Moi finally appointed Harun Mwau to head an anti-corruption campaign. Within months and working with religious zeal, Mwau had obtained arrest warrants for the WRONG people: some of Kenya's few clean senior civil servants.  In January 2000, the ruling party’s (KANU’s) gang of thugs known as Jeshi la Mzee (“the old man’s army”), attacked a group of opposition leaders outside parliament who were protesting against the resumption of IMF assistance. A battalion of policemen rushed to the scene. But “it was the protesters, not the thugs, who were arrested.”