By Oscar Obonyo

President Barack Obama’s administration could deploy its clout to force Kenya to hasten constitutional reforms.

For the second time on Saturday, the US Ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, told The Standard on Sunday various options are available, including travel bans.

His statement reinforced another this month by Obama’s official emissary to President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Johnnie Carson, who made it clear his brief was to “warn a friend” America could soon “flex its muscles.” Ranneberger spoke against the backdrop of a closed-door meeting between Obama and Tanzania President Jakaya Kikwete. It is believed Kenya’s troubled coalition and the gradual loss of grip by the weak-kneed Somali government featured at the meeting.

A secure Kenya is viewed by America and the European Union as guaranteed vanguard against the spill over of terrorism from lawless Somalia.

The turn of events, coming at a time the local economy and political fabric are tattered, rekindle memories of the first months of last year, when then US President George Bush sent messages to Kibaki and Raila that power sharing was not a matter of personal preference but inevitable.

Again like it is today one man, who played a big role in breaking the ice between Kibaki and Raila, was in the loop – President Kikwete who had just been crowned the African Union chairman. Bush flew into Tanzania – and it is after they met that Kikwete crossed over to Kenya with a message now believed to have been choosing between power sharing and dispatch of United Nations peacekeepers.

At the time, before Bush landed and with Kibaki having named a half-Cabinet with Kalonzo Musyoka as Vice-President, the VP flew to Tanzania to meet Kikwete.

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   President Obama Meets President Jakaya Kikwete and Sec. of State Hillary Clinton in The Oval Office

This round again Kalonzo left the funeral of Water Minister Charity Ngilu’s mother, saying he was flying to Tanzania to meet Kikwete. While there, his press service as well as the Tanzanian Press, curiously did not mention he had had closely-guarded talks with Kikwete, who was about to travel to the US. It is the journey that made him the first African leader to meet Obama as President.

As Kenya was told by Rannerberger, Obama would not set foot here, despite this being his ancestral roots, because of political disorder and jolt to the reform process.

Meanwhile, Ghana was celebrating Obama’s decision to choose her as his first stop as the President of the world’s only superpower.

In what our sources described as a “critical encounter,” Kalonzo met Kikwete on May 15.

According to a report filed from Washington in Saturday’s Daily News of Tanzania, Kikwete and Obama discussed Kenya’s political situation and “other trouble regions of Darfur, DRC and Somalia.”

Raila’s one-week tour

The details of the discussions were however scanty, but given the stand US ambassador in Kenya has taken on the confusion in the Grand Coalition, and the slow pace of reforms, and with Kikwete’s perceived ?expertise’ on Kenya’s affairs, it cannot be ruled out the issues raised by Rannerberger featured.

Asked what was discussed by the two world leaders on Saturday, the ambassador, who has adopted grassroots-based healing and reconciliation effort among communities scarred by post-election violence, said he did not know.

Interestingly, Kikwete’s visit to the US also coincided with that of Raila’s one-week tour of the superpower nation, where a few weeks ago, his wife Ida, met Mrs Michelle Obama.

Raila’s team was tight-lipped on whether he tried or may even have talked to Obama, or even what Ida discussed with US first black First Lady.

From Tanzania, the regular VPPS dispatches captured events involving Tanzania’s VP, Ali Mohammed Shein.

“The two (Kikwete and Kalonzo) met although no details were divulged and we have been warned against running the story,” an editor of Rai, Tanzania’s weekly political newspaper, confirmed to The Standard on Sunday.

According to the journalist, Kalonzo flew to Dar on Friday, and was met by his Tanzanian counterpart who drove him straight to State House for a meeting with Kikwete.

“Officially, your Vice-President’s host during the two-day trip was Dr Shein and not Kikwete. We could not run this story because State House officials confided to us President Kikwete was sensitive over the Kenyan affair as he did not wish to be seen to favour any side of the political divide,” the editor said in a telephone interview.

Although details of the Kalonzo-Kikwete meeting remain hazy, chances are the encounter was linked to the Obama meeting at the Oval Office on Thursday.

Kalonzo, a former Foreign Affairs Minister, played the same role, flying into African States shortly after the disputed presidential election, to give the PNU account to the international community.

It is not clear whether Raila was also in touch with the Tanzanian leader ahead of his meeting with Obama. The Standard on Sunday also could not establish whether Raila was scheduled to meet Obama, although Kenya’s ambassador to the US, Peter Ogego, said the PM was not expected in Washington.

A fortnight ago Obama warned President Kibaki and PM to ease political tension and fully execute the National Accord as crafted by former United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan.

His message, through Carson, was blunt: “The US is ready to take necessary steps should the coalition fail to implement the Annan agreement.”

Tattered economy

The apparent scramble for Kikwete’s attention by local leaders is understandable. The Kenyan situation after all formed part of the agenda of Obama-Kikwete talks.

Obama’s dissatisfaction with the local political leadership comes in the wake of a gloomy Economic Survey report by Planning Minister Wycliffe Oparanya. With a just 1.7 per cent growth, Kenya’s economy is no better than warring Somalia’s 2.6 per cent.

And even as the US is increasingly lumps Kenya with failed States in the region, the disturbing aspect of the unfolding drama is the country’s inability to tap and take advantage of the US President’s roots.

The one man, who is running away first with possible political and economic advantage from Obama, is Kikwete. Since election as Tanzania’s President in 2006, Kikwete has enjoyed closer ties with the ?Big Brother’. That was the case during the reign of 43rd US President George W Bush.

His country’s clout and fortune have correspondingly risen as Kenya’s plummet.

In mid-2006, for instance, Kenyans reacted angrily when news filtered through that Bush and Kikwete had discussed Kenya, during a bilateral meeting in Washington. Foreign Affairs Minister, Moses Wetangula, then an Assistant Minister, demanded a public apology from the two leaders.

Two years later, Bush flew to Tanzania when the country was burning, from where he issued threats to Kenyans to stop further bloodshed and form a coalition government. Kikwete delivered the message and it worked.

Today, Kikwete still occupies that special and envious place in the eyes of American leadership.

Last Thursday, he met Obama in Washington. When Kikwete invited Obama to Tanzania, which former President Clinton like Bush, visited and snubbed Kenya, the new US leader’s response was more than curious.

“I would like to visit Tanzania. Last time I saw your country from the other side of Serengeti National Park,” he said, referring to his 2006 visit to Kenya.

Then, Kibaki’s spokesman, Alfred Mutua, dismissed Obama as, “a junior Senator from Illinois.” Mutua was reacting to Obama’s assertion corruption is undermining Kenya’s development.

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By: Okech Kendo

   Okech Kendo
Post-apartheid South Africa’s next president is certain to be an unlikely occupant of the office. And not just because Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, also known by his clan name Msholozi, lacks the stature or polish of Nelson Mandela, or the intellectual deceit and accomplishments of Thabo Mbeki.

Zuma falls much below their moral and intellectual par, yet he is ahead of many. This is probably because of coincidence or too frequently being underestimated because of his dismal formal education. The Zulu Boy – and Zuma is a child of that flamboyant, masculine and military community – counts Shaka, the empire destroyer, among his ancestors, if only through ethnic affinity. Indeed, a Zulu was always coming to be president of independent South Africa, given their numerical strength in the tribe-and-race-defined country.

But few would imagine the inheritor would be Zuma, in an age when the influence of western education is dominant. Zuma often thinks less of himself, almost in a self-deprecatory way, sometimes to spite others who think they are highbred.

While in South Africa early this month, I entered a bookshop at Oliver Tambo Airport in Johannesburg to buy a book I could not find in Nairobi. Michaela Wrong’s John Githongo-inspired It is Our Turn To Eat was priced at 270 Rand (about Sh2,700), so I picked a copy of Jeremy Gordin’s Zuma: A Biography instead.

A woman at the counter was baffled with my selection and my remark I wanted to read about “the next president of South Africa.” It was obvious she and her kind would stop a Zuma presidency if they could.

   Jacob Zuma, Left With Zulu Elders

Even with a history of sexual adventurism, a high profile case of like nature, and other related moral questions about the Zulu Boy, Zuma’s presidential stream is unstoppable. The majority of those who matter in a democracy are with him, so no rich Afrikaan racists can stop him. Not even the wealthy, powerful elite of his mentor Mbeki can stop him.

Minor river

Asked why he was not popular with writers, Zuma told Gordin: “Why should anyone write about me? I’m not an important person. I’m not from a politically famous or royal family. I am not an influential businessman. I’m just an ordinary person.”

Mandela is from a royal Xhosa family. Thabo Mbeki, his successor, is from a political family, son of Govan Mbeki, an ANC founder member. One of Zuma’s possible rivals in future is Cyril Ramaphosa, an ANC insider and successful entrepreneur who might have succeeded Mandela. (Ramaphosa, by the way, is the negotiator PNU rejected last year, claiming he could not assist Dr Kofi Annan because he is close to ODM leader Raila Odinga.)

In Khrushchev: The Man, His Era, William Taubman echoes the Zuma narrative, particularly his relationship with Mbeki.

The story goes: “‘Once upon a time,’ (Nikita) Khrushchev said, ‘there were three men in a prison: A social democrat, an anarchist and a humble little Jew – a half-educated fellow named Pinya. They decided to elect a cell leader to watch over the distribution of food, tea and tobacco.

“The anarchist, a big burly fellow, was against electing authority. To show his contempt for law and order, he proposed that the semi-educated Jew be elected.

“Things went well until they decided to escape. They realised that the first man to go through the tunnel would be shot at by the guard. They all turned to the big brave anarchist. But he was afraid to go.

Suddenly, poor little Pinya drew himself up and said: ‘Comrades, you elected me by a democratic process as your leader. Therefore, I will go first’.”

The moral: However humble a man’s beginning, he achieves the stature of the office to which he is elected. Pinya could be Zuma, the son of a KwaZulu Natal policeman and a maid. He never had formal education. The brutality of his boyhood saw him take up casual labour in Boer homes. His father died before Zuma, barely a baby, understood the cruelty around him. The brutality shaped his boyhood, and would lead him to detention in Robben Island for ten years.

His wedding with the ANC is the subject of legend. He enlisted at age 17. In 1991, when ANC was looking for someone to lead the party in talks with FW De Clerk’s National Party and Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party, it was a gesture from ANC president Oliver Tambo that did it. Tired and sick then, Tambo was seen to have pointed his stick at Zuma and no one wanted to contradict him.

When Mbeki picked Zuma as deputy president, he underrated his worth. He figured that Zuma would have no ambition for the highest office. How wrong he was: Zulu Boy is in after he ejected Mbeki from ANC!

Analysis — South Africa Elections

The Splintering Rainbow

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Zain Verjee is a news anchor for The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer based in the network’s Washington, D.C., bureau. Previously, Verjee spent two years as CNN’s State Department correspondent, a role in which she traveled with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to more than a dozen countries, including Israel, Libya, Russia and South Korea.

Zain Verjee (born February 11, 1974) is a Canadian journalist born and raised in Kenya who is of Indian descent. In July 2006, she reported from the DMZ, and in September, she conducted an exclusive interview with former Iranian president Mohammed Khatami.

Zain is a practicing Ismaili Muslim.

In January 2008, Verjee returned to her native country of Kenya to cover the post-election violence there. She spent weeks reporting the political and personal stories she found as well as the international community’s response to the hostilities. [ READ MORE ]

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Kenyans are outraged by a proposal to pay hefty salaries to the wives of the prime minister and vice-president.

A leaked document says the head of civil service Francis Muthaura has directed that they each be paid $6,000 (£3,000) every month.

But MPs have vowed to shoot down the proposal in parliament, saying it is too expensive for the economy.

Kenyan tax-payers are already paying heavily for the cabinet – the largest ever – with more than 40 ministers.

A government memo leaked to the local media directs that Ida Odinga and Pauline Musyoka, wives of the prime minister and vice-president respectively, will be rewarded for their roles as hostesses.

   Ida Odinga                                                                     Pauline and Kalonzo Musyoka [Enlarge]

The pay is also supposed to recognise their role for upholding national family values.

‘Over-burdened’

But Eugene Wamalwa, an MP and brother for former Vice-President Micheal Kijana Wamalwa, says the tax-payer is already over-burdened and the allowances are uncalled for.

“The prime minister and vice-president attract one of the highest salaries in the world and that will be sufficient for couples,” Mr Wamalwa said.

And former head of the Kenyan chapter of Transparency International Gladwell Otieno said the move is a confirmation that Kenyan politicians are just a greedy caste, looking after themselves at the expense of poor Kenyans recovering from the effects of post-election violence.

The two women will join First Lady Lucy Kibaki, whose allowances increased last year to nearly $8,000 a month.

President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga agreed to share power in February after negotiations led by former UN head Kofi Annan to end weeks of violent clashes.

Some 1,500 people died and 600,000 left homeless around the country after last December’s disputed elections.

Taken From: How rich is Kenya, really?

This is an example of the CIA Meddling in African Affairs during the cold-war era
| Other CIA activities in Africa |

By Douglas Okwatch

Fresh details of a conspiracy that could have provided a motive for the assassination of Cabinet Minister Thomas Joseph Mboya have emerged ahead of the 39th year since his death.

Kenyatta
The CIA appears to have recruited the flamboyant minister and former trade unionist in a heavily funded “selective liberation” programme to isolate Kenya’s founding President Jomo Kenyatta, who the American spy agency labelled as “unsafe.”

Declassified information in an undated issue of Ramparts, an American political and literary magazine published in the 1960s and early 1970s, accessed by The Standard at the Kenya National Archives, shows an elaborate conspiracy by CIA to prop up Mboya and isolate Kenyatta.

Ramparts closed shop in 1975. Whether this scheme sowed seeds of suspicion and mistrust between Kenyatta and Mboya, who at the time of his assassination was the Economic Planning minister and Kamukunji MP, is a matter for further investigation.

The revelations come four months after Mboya’s widow, Pamela, wrote to Mr Kofi Annan, former UN secretary-general who also chaired talks that ended political violence in Kenya early in the year, asking that the matter be investigated afresh by a truth commission.

“The assassination of my husband, like others after him, is a matter that has remained shrouded in mystery and speculation, and which has been avoided by successive regimes in this country,” she wrote.

Trail of Questions

In a telephone conversation with this writer last month, Mrs Mboya promised to “drop the bombshell” in an interview. But she later changed her mind. Her last word was that she would spill the beans at an “appropriate time.”

Questions also abound on whether the convicted assassin, Nahashon Njenga Njoroge, was actually executed. The testimony of the assassin’s own brother and anecdotal evidence that he has been seen by a retired military officer, among other claims, pile on the doubts of his execution.

Mboya
Secret letters, also declassified, further show that Mboya had a particularly tumultuous relationship with Mr Mbiyu Koinange, a minister and power broker of the Kenyatta presidency.

In one instance, Koinange wrote an emotional letter to Kenyatta to defend himself against allegations of disloyalty by Mboya.

“Sir, you know my loyalty to you personally, to our Kanu party; of my long loyalty to Kenya and latterly my loyalty to our new independent Council of Ministers.”

“My loyalty is beyond doubt, therefore, my Prime Minister. I frankly feel that there is no need for me to reply to Mr Mboya’s letter.”

“It is unfortunate, ill-timed, egoistic and, if I may say so, an irresponsible letter which is skilfully designed by one of my colleagues to endanger the good working spirit among us.”

Koinange was then Minister of State in the Office of the President and one of the most powerful figures in the Government. He died in September 1981.

The secret letters in our possession cover the period between 1961 and 1966. Desperate to extricate himself from the tag of traitor, Mboya, in a letter on March 11, 1961, pleaded with Kenyatta, who was languishing in a Lodwar jail: “I’d hate to appear a hero at your expense.”

He attached copies of various statements he had made in meetings with the Governor for Kenyatta’s perusal. The move appeared to capture his own internal consciousness that Kenyatta may have begun to perceive him as a threat.

The letters also reveal how the CIA used Kenyatta to finish Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, his Vice-President, politically by amending the Constitution to his office of all powers.

Traitor or nationalist?

Ramparts reported that: “The CIA programme in Kenya could be summed up as one of selective liberation. The chief beneficiary was Tom Mboya who, in 1953, became general secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labour.”

Koinange
Both a credible nationalist and an economic conservative, Mboya who was popularly known as ‘TJ’, was ideal for CIA’s purpose. The main nationalist hero and eventual chief of state, Kenyatta, was not considered “sufficiently safe” owing to his initial deep socialist leanings, the dossier said.

Ramparts quotes Mboya as saying: “Those proven codes of conduct in the African societies, which have over the ages conferred dignity on our people and afforded them security regardless of their station in life.

“I refer to the universal charity, which characterises our societies, and I refer to the African thought processes and cosmological ideas, which regard men, not as a social means, but as an end and entity in society.”

This powerful quote not only captures Mboya’s own prescription of African socialism, which endeared him to the West and made the CIA view his policy as safe, but it also paints the picture of an articulate, sophisticated and ambitious political thinker.

Soon after, Mboya joined the CIA jet set, travelling around the world from Oxford in the UK to Calcutta in India on funds from such conduits as the Africa Bureau and from the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).

ICFTU, which played a key role in Kenya’s independence through trade unionism, is an aggregation of international trade union secretariats set up in 1949 to counter an upsurge of left-wing trade unionism outside the communist bloc, according to Ramparts. The CIA allegedly funded operations at the time.

But when George Cabot Lodge, one of the directors of the ICFTU, made the statement (believed to have been in specific reference to Mboya at the time) that “the obscure trade unionist of today may well be the president or prime minister of tomorrow,” he left no doubt about Mboya’s personal ambitions and by extension the CIA’s scheme of things.

Initially, CIA’s natural strategy was to underwrite Mboya and his labour federation as a force against Kenyatta. But when tact changed in accordance with the world order and the CIA’s new priorities, it was agreed that Western labour groups stop funding Mboya.

An accommodation with Kenyatta was now thought necessary, particularly to ensure that he did not support rebels in Congo, and to get him to close ranks against the agitating Kenyan left.

But the die had been cast. The CIA, through its activities, had effectively propped up Mboya as a possible future President of Kenya. That threat was real during Kenyatta’s time and even at the dawn of the second decade of his leadership, according to Ramparts.

It was a strategy that the CIA would use again to the benefit of Kenyatta against Odinga — use the credibility of the appropriate militant to crush the rest. The CIA link, which Mboya vigorously fought to distance himself with, would be used later to fight him politically by branding him a traitor and a man who could not to be trusted. He wrote lengthy responses in his defence.

But had the CIA sowed enough seeds of wrath between Mboya and the political establishment in Kenya to provide someone with enough reason to kill him?

REFERENCES:

1. Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya’s murder & the return of one-party State
2. Ready or Not – TIME
3. Setback for Tom – TIME