Michael Mundia Kamau
P.O. Box 58972
00200 City Square
Nairobi
Kenya

9th May 2004

    A NATION IN TURMOIL

The head of the civil service in Kenya has issued a stern warning
against
the leakage of government corruption to the public ! This in itself is
admission on the government’s part of the existence of widespread state
corruption and an indication of the ineffectiveness of the threat,
given
that the civil service head’s circular leaked.

There is a breakdown in communication in Kenya. Law and order in Kenya
broke
down a long time ago and the head of the civil service should be aware
of
this. A nation within a nation, a system within another, has evolved in
the
forty years that we have continued to deceive ourselves that all is
well.
Directives, threats and warnings, are of no use and need to be
substituted
with comprehension, deliberations, feedback, transition, skill and
wisdom.
Threats are a manifestation of inadequacy and barrenness and powerfully
signify that Kenya is not in the firm grip of the NARC government.

The NARC government continues to insult the intelligence and patience
of the
people of this country by preaching water and drinking wine.
Institutionalised corruption in Kenya evolved not necessarily because
of
K.A.N.U. rule, but because of a country that was guided by myth,
fantasising
and greed, rather than sound policy and sound judgement. All these
cannot be
wished away by directives and threats but by a clean up transition.

The head of the civil service belongs to an elite generation of Kenyans
who
received quality training from missionaries and the colonial
government. It
is this training and skills that have placed them in the pole positions
that
they are in today. When veteran Kenyan educator, Carey Francis passed
away,
his funeral was attended by a distinguished array of cabinet ministers
and
private sector luminaries, a tribute to the man and his legacy. Very
few
Kenyans aged thirty five and below are however able to relate to the
name
Carey Francis. It is this group of individuals who form the bulk of
Kenya’s
population, the bulk that has most missed out on the opportunities of
Carey
Francis’ Kenya. It is a generation that has grown up on the fringes of
society continually promised of an elusive better tomorrow. It is a
generation that worked no less hard in school, but sadly missed out on
the
opportunities of Carey Francis’ Kenya. Directives, threats and warnings
may
have worked in Carey Francis’ Kenya, but they are totally inadequate in
NARC’s desperate Kenya.

High and unplanned population growth has made it impossible for the
current
structures to cope. The few income earners are severely burdened with
the
needs of an entire nation. It is said that when an individual in Africa
is
sacked, an entire clan is sacked. For many years in Kenya, it was
fashionable to make third party references to the common man and his
plight,
until an entire nation rudely awoke to the grim reality that we had all
become common men. Literally all of us now wade through pools of filthy
water brought about by a crumbling infrastructure, literally all of us
are
the targets of police brutality and harassment and are continually
being
made to part with bribes to avoid worse, literally all of us are
victims of
crime and terror and are constantly in fear of our safety and security
and
literally all of us live in ill planned neighbourhoods lacking several
amenities and littered with all manner of garbage and refuse, including
human feaces.

We emerge from this predicament to either walk to our places of work,
or
board steeply priced public service vehicles fitted with seat belts for
our
safety. We are unable to orderly organise ourselves in the boarding
process
and therefore have to rely on stage touts with much less education and
training than ourselves, to restore order. We also rely on the despised
touts with much less education and training than ourselves, to maneuver
through the multiplicity of traffic jams, and get us to work on time,
to
find a strong worded circular from the head of the civil service. The
circular is quickly dismissed as it has less of a bearing than the one
on
looming staff retrenchments, which we understand is still on it’s way.

The situation in Kenya is tense, and it is up to the NARC government to
alleviate this tension. In place of threats, the people of Kenya need
to see
encouraging reforms, however minimal. It is this very same NARC
government
that convinced Kenyans that it was the K.A.N.U. regime, and nothing
more,
that was the stumbling block to Kenya’s development. The NARC
government is
ruling by directives, not objectives, and without the input of the
people.
Why wasn’t public input sought on the constitutional review stalemate
and on
public transport sector reform ? Why is the NARC government taking the
people of Kenya for granted ? The debt is yet to be paid and this
cannot be
evaded.

Rebellious groupings like “Mungiki”, “Angola Msumbiji”, “Jeshi la Mzee”
and
“Baghdad Boys” have evolved and grown because of the inability and
denial by
Carey Francis’ Kenya to accept and address the realties of a
drastically
changed nation. The language of the people must be spoken if there are
to be
any breakthroughs. On Jamhuri day 1993, former President Moi caused
roared
and prolonged laughter when he said that K.A.N.U. won the general
elections
of the previous year because it dispatched young children to their
mothers
to beg for forgiveness. He used this description again during Mzee
Kenyatta’s memorial in the year 2002, with the same effect. This is the
simplistic approach that must be used, not threats.



Michael Mundia Kamau