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I hope Kenya will emerge from the Uhuru-Ruto chaos intact by Jenerali Ulimwengu

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When Zambian president Frederick Chiluba threw his predecessor in jail in 1997, he was jerking up the relations between the two men to a new high. It had been going on for some time since the days before multiparty politics in the country. Kaunda was the head of state, and Chiluba was an uppity trade unionist wanting to challenge state authority.

Kaunda had given this pint-sized troublemaker a tour of jail a few times under the notorious preventive detention laws that many African rulers had armed themselves with to put out any dissent they faced.

Now the shoe was on the other foot, and Chiluba was anxious to use it as a boot to kick KK in the backside by making him taste a bit of his own medicine. To make it even tastier, he arrested him on Christmas Day, when any other day would have done just fine!

Julius Nyerere was so touched by this action and even more worried when his old friend went on a hunger strike that he asked for permission to visit KK in jail to convince him to eat. Chiluba allowed Nyerere to enter the jail, but on condition that the doors be locked behind him, lest KK escape!

This is an instructive story that informs politics on the African continent to this day. It has even come to cause thought to emerge within African governance discourses that it is the fear of being hunted down by their successors that renders many rulers refuse to vacate their offices once their terms come to an end. It has thus been suggested that there be some assurance or other that a former ruler will not be in any way made to account for his or her deeds when he or she was in office.

There have been other cases where new rulers have made those who ruled before them uncomfortable.

For instance, Botswana’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi is not on talking terms with Ian Khama for the simple reason that the latter supported an opposition candidate. Sierra Leone’s Ernest Koroma (former president) is not on the best terms with the man who replaced him, Julius Maada Bio.

South Africa’s Jacob Zuma has been jailed on the watch of his successor Cyril Ramaphosa.

Angola’s second president Jose Edouardo dos Santos went to his grave before being reconciled with the third president, Joao Lourenco.

And so on and so forth.

Even where there are no exterior signs of dissension, subterranean tremors suggest that all is not well.

In Tanzania, it is well known that John Pombe Magufuli’s histrionics did not sit well with Jakaya Kikwete or Benjamin Mkapa, though they hardly uttered a word to criticise him for the exactions he was meting out to sections of the population.

Samia would like us to believe she is following in Magufuli’s footsteps, though some of us are seeing parallel tracks in the sand.

All the tensions we have noticed on the African continent between the incumbents and those who went before them do have explanations, though some are not very clear, especially those occurring between two individuals emanating from the same political organisation, such as the case in Angola, South Africa or Tanzania.

Individual styles and personal predilections seem to have precedence over parties, especially because what are called parties are nothing but empty shells set up merely to grab state power.

It is over the resources of the country and how they will be shared among the various postulants that battle lines are drawn, and the cut-throat competition this causes can be deadly indeed, both before and after the contest is settled one way or the other.

It is in this context that I worry about the elections in Kenya early in August. The campaigns and their fallout have been most extraordinary. That a sitting president and his (also sitting) vice-president can be in a bare-knuckle brawl in the public is certainly unprecedented, and, for me, it augurs ill for the near future of the country, whoever wins in the contest.

To say that there is bad blood between Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto would be the understatement of the decade; the two literally hate each other’s guts, and they have let the world know as much. Their rivalry has made a number of people wonder how their government works nowadays, seeing as they are both still in office until the new government is installed. Just what is happening?

Much of the world observing this contest will be scratching their collective head trying to comprehend this scenario and what it portends for Kenyans. Some will ask whether the 2010 Constitution really helped the Kenyans to bury the devastating hatchet we saw in the wake of 2007-08 when mobs of Kenyans butchered and set fire to each other with such abandon that it seemed Armageddon had arrived.

As I say above, I know it is the resources of the country over which these unseemly wars are being fought. In the end, there will be a victor and a loser.

It is to be hoped that somewhere in the collective psyche, there will be enough forbearance and resilience to allow the Kenyans to emerge out of this apparent chaos with their sanity intact.

Strictly Personal

Road deaths are symbolic of our national failure, By Tee Ngugi

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“Killer roads claim 25 lives,” screamed the headline of the Daily Nation on March 18. Among this number were 11 Kenyatta University students, who died in a grisly road accident on the Nairobi- Mombasa highway.

The report gave chilling statistics on the ever-worsening road carnage. The 25 died in a span of three days. Between January and February 20, a staggering 649 people lost their lives on our roads.

What these statistics show is that we are well on our way to breaking the annual record of deaths on our roads.

Roads are deadlier

In a column in 2022, Kenyan roads are deadlier than some of the battlefields, I gave some comparative statistics to illustrate just how deadly our roads are.

I stated: “In 2021, more than 4,000 people lost their lives (in Kenya). By contrast, the UK, with a population of 65 million people and 32 million cars, recorded 1,400 deaths on the roads in 2021.

“In Germany, within a comparable period, about 2,500 people died on the roads in a population of 85 million people and 48 million cars.
“Thus, Kenya, with a population of 50 million people and only two million cars, registered more deaths on the roads.”

I went on to show that the deaths on our roads in 2021 were twice the number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan in a 20-year period.

If these statistics are not enough to wake up our somnolent officials, then nothing ever will.

Not the avoidable deaths during droughts. Not the deaths caused by collapsing buildings. Not the sky-high cases of femicide.

Not the cry of millions who sleep hungry every day as officials fly around in helicopters. Not the alarming numbers of street families.
Not the despair of millions of unemployed youth. Not the squalor in our unplanned towns and cities.

Nothing will wake these officials. In any case, as the Daily Nation of March 19 on globe-trotting officials showed, when awake, our officials are travelling to the next European destination or, as the countless cases of theft being reported almost daily in all media show, they are busy lining their already saturated pockets.

Now, Kenya wants to send its police to Haiti to rein in marauding gangs that control most of the capital. Do our officials, or citizens, ever ask themselves how Haiti became what it is?

Cursed by God

Haiti is not cursed by God. It got that way because of systematic plunder by officials over the years.

It became what it is because of officials not performing their duties to required standards, and not being sanctioned for it.

It became that way because its officials love nothing more than to cavort in Paris or Miami, rather than think about how to transform the lives of their people.

Every day in our papers, we read about the conduct of our officials that mirrors the behaviour that led to Haiti becoming the broken country it is today.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator

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Strictly Personal

How patriarchy underpins gender violence today, By Tee Ngugi

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On January 27, Kenyan women flooded city streets to protest rising cases of femicide. These were the largest protests ever held against gender-based violence in the country.

The killings that triggered the outrage were especially horrific. In one instance, a woman was raped, beaten and forced to swallow acid. Another young woman was beheaded in airbnb establishment. In January alone, 14 women were killed in the country. Between 2016 –2024, 500 women were killed. The figures, horrendous as they are, are thought to be higher.

Statistics on gender-based violence paint a very sick society. Almost half of women in the country experience gender-based violence in their lifetime. Then countless others face daily sexual harassment in schools, public transportation, universities and workplaces.

Boda boda riders are notorious for harassing women drivers. In an incident that caused national shame, boda bodas descended on a hapless woman driver they accused of ramming one of them and physically and sexually assaulted her.

A few years ago, some self-appointed moral police would beat and undress women they deemed indecently dressed, as if in a country in which billions are stolen every year, and in which so many sleep hungry, the most egregious crime is a woman’s short skirt.

To be sure, femicide and physical and sexual violence against women is not a uniquely Kenyan problem. In South Africa, rape has reached crisis proportions. In eastern Congo and other war-ravaged regions in Africa, rape is a weapon of war.

The problem of rape also transcends race, culture and religion. In the United States and, surprisingly, liberal Sweden, rape is endemic. And in the so-called traditional societies of Lesotho and Swaziland, rape is a serious problem. In pious India, rape had become so rampant that it even happened in buses. The government, unlike other regions, moved with ferocity to stem the problem.

The Kenyan protesters called for tough legislation against gender-based violence as well as quick police action in response to cases of sexual harassment. These measures will go a long way in curbing the impunity that exists in the country about violence against women.

But, at the same time, we must seek to change deeply ingrained cultural attitudes. Even though we no longer live in the traditional society, residual traditional attitudes still stain our views of women. Therefore, we must explore ways of overcoming these cultural attitudes and making them a liability in society.

At the same time, we must rid our society of erroneous views such as there is a head of a family who lords it over the household and, instead, advocates a respectful partnership. Other erroneous beliefs consider domestic violence as not quite violence and rape within marriage as not quite rape.

Police stations also need to be sensitive to rape victims. Eradicating gender-based violence will, therefore, require uncompromising action at the levels of legislation, policing and culture.

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