Ruth tried half-heartedly to turn him away. But Obama charmed her with an onslaught of entreaties. He loved her to the core of his being. He adored their son and had yearned for them every day they had been gone. If she would only return with him, he vowed that everything would be different.

He would never pursue another woman again. He would not even look at another woman, he insisted.

What’s more, he had already lined up a new job. Starting in October Obama was to be the senior development officer for the newly created Kenya Tourist Development Corporation (KTDC), a high-profile government corporation charged with overseeing the blossoming industry and directing public investment in a spate of new hotels and parks. As the second highest-ranking employee in the organisation, Obama was to receive a handsome annual salary of 2,275 pounds.

Plum job

It was a plum job that put Obama squarely in the league of the government’s other ranking economists and at the forefront of an industry to which Mzee, the Swahili term of respect for an elder, Kenyatta himself was closely attuned.

It was not a permanent secretary’s post like Philip Ndegwa had landed or even the top job at the KTDC, but it was a good job nonetheless. And it gave him a much-needed chance to rehabilitate himself. Adding to Obama’s bounty, the job came with a lovely home in the exclusive Woodley Estate west of the city’s center, a neighbourhood that the Nairobi City Council developed expressly for Europeans in the late 1940s.

Since independence, however, a handful of prominent Africans, including members of Parliament and government ministers, had trickled into the handsome homes flanked by high green hedges.

Obama’s house was a welcoming stone bungalow with a red tile roof, complete with a separate servants’ quarters that could accommodate the trail of relatives that invariably followed him. Ruth soon abandoned her plan of staying in the United States and agreed to return with him to Nairobi.

But it wasn’t because of Obama’s promises of fidelity or even the goodies he dangled before her. “There was a connection between us, a passion, the type of love that holds a man and a woman together,” said Ruth.

“He loved me in a certain way, as much as he was able. It wasn’t just because I was white because surely that wears off. For myself, he was a man I had a very strong passion for.

I did not have that passion again in my life.” Once they were back in Nairobi, Obama’s promises lasted only as long as it took Ruth to unpack her bags. No sooner had the couple settled into their new home than Obama resumed his carousing ways, leaving Ruth to juggle her secretarial job at Nestlé and caring for his extended family with only the help of a housekeeper.

There were now three of his children living in the house along with a succession of visiting relatives.

Roy, his eldest son, who would later be known as Malik, attended the prestigious Lenana School, once exclusively for whites. Rita, later known as Auma, attended a day school before eventually enrolling in the Kenya High School.

Although Kezia regularly visited her children, bearing sweets and small gifts in the early years after they moved in with their father and his new wife, Kezia’s tearful demeanour annoyed Obama, so he had her visits abruptly stopped. Auma would not see her birth mother for nearly seven years.

There were also the young relatives who lived in the servant quarters out back. Not long after he returned from the United States, Obama had taken his first cousin Ezra under his wing.

Ezra was a clever and amusing boy whose father, one of Hussein Onyango’s brothers, was unable to pay for his son’s schooling. So Ezra moved into the squat servants’ quarters in 1967 and remained there for four years while Obama paid for his education.

He was not alone. When Wilson Obama, another cousin, showed up in similar need, Obama agreed to pay for his education and offered him a place to stay for close to two years. Amir Otieno Orinda, Obama’s half-brother with whom he shared the same mother, was in and out of the house as well.

Zeituni Onyango, Obama’s half-sister, stayed at the house for several weeks in the late 1960s and would later help to take care of Malik and Auma. As those and other Obamas came and went from the busy household, Ruth sometimes found herself passing people in the hallway who, she says, “I hadn’t the slightest idea who they were.”

Obama, meanwhile, had once again become a habitué of the city’s nightspots and would migrate from one elegant hotel barroom to the next.

Buoyed by his new post and the keen interest others took in his command of econometrics, Double-Double now had mingi?Swahili for “many”? drinking companions.

Flush with their new salaries and Harambee Avenue offices, a certain element of the new African elite cultivated a lifestyle richly steeped in alcohol. One of their favorite places was the bar at the newly opened InterContinental, called The Big Five in reference to the five most difficult and dangerous animals to hunt in Africa’s far-flung game parks.

The intimate retreat offered an eclectic mix.

Patrons lounging on the plush leather stools could as likely rub shoulders with a dewy-eyed tourist from New Jersey, a minister who had just strolled out of the nearby Treasury building, or a World Bank project manager making notations on his napkin, all under the glassy-eyed gaze of the lion and gazelle mounted on the walls.

It also drew from the senior ranks of the civil service and the top echelon of the business community. Some of the regulars among the African elite were Mwai Kibaki, Kenya’s current president and then Minister of Commerce and Industry, and Francis Masakhalia, Obama’s old Maseno School friend and by then an economist/statistician with the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development headed by Tom Mboya. Members of the nearby Parliament and a host of Treasury officers were often a part of the mix. When Obama tired of his double shots there, he often headed to the Panafric Hotel for a chaser or two of Chivas or Martel cognac.

To wrap up the evening he occasionally stopped at the Starlight Club for a spin around the dance floor before heading home to Woodley in the early hours of the morning.

Barely coherent

By the time he got there Obama was often stumbling and barely coherent. If Ruth or one of the children made the mistake of locking up before they went to bed, Obama would hammer loudly on the door and angrily demand that someone let him in. Gladys Ogolah, the next-door neighbour who knew Obama from their days at Central Bank together, heard every word of it.

“He would shout at Ruth, ‘Open the door, woman. Open the door,‘” Ogolah recalled. “He would say, ‘Why are you sleeping when I am not back at home. Open the door now.’ And then he would beat on the door, boom, boom, boom.”

Ogolah was hardly the only Woodley resident keenly aware of their baritone-voiced neighbour. Even when Obama was sober, his thundering voice wafted over the hedges and shattered the neighbourhood calm.

Sometimes, he was just calling to his children without making any effort to keep his voice down. But on the nights when he and Ruth got into an argument, his domineering voice could be heard the length of the Loddon Grove road and sometimes beyond.

Not long after they moved into the house, the Obamas had become a regular topic of neighborhood talk, little of it good. “Barack would come back from work or wherever he was in the middle of the night and they would fight very loudly,” recalled Ndolo Ayah, who lived nearby. “Everybody knew about it.

I think we all worried a bit about Ruth’s safety. Barack was not a violent person, but he could be very violent in his language.”

Gladys Ogolah and her husband, Boaz, got to know the Obamas well and not just because of the couple’s ongoing fighting. Boaz Ogolah was also an economist who worked in the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, and Obama respected his breadth of knowledge and experience.Sometimes Obama would drop in for a drink, and the two men would critique the other economists in government service whose academic credentials they considered inferior to their own.

Obama would also talk openly of some of the beautiful women to whom he was attracted.

“Barack was a Luo and a polygamist, and so this was no big deal to him,” said Ogolah. “He was very open about it.”

Just a few years younger than her neighbour, Gladys Ogolah grew to like her new American friend.

Ruth clearly enjoyed Kenya and appreciated many of its customs. Unlike some mzungu who tended to stick with their own, Ruth counted African women among her closest friends. She was also devoted to all of Obama’s children and even some of his closer cousins. She was the one who arranged their weekend outings swimming at the Panafric and Safari Park hotels or picnics in the countryside. And she was the one who drove them to their schools and doctors’ appointments and, at times, shielded them from their father.

“Ruth was a very great woman,” said Ezra Obama, sixty-one and a retired manager of market development for Coca-Cola living outside Nairobi. “She treated all of us children the same and I respected her very much.”

But no matter how much Ruth tried to make things run smoothly, Obama seemed always to have a complaint. And when his shouting developed into more aggressive behavior in the passing months, it was to Ogolah that Ruth often turned, running through the darkness to the safe haven of her neighbor’s kitchen. “Sometimes, when he came home late he would order her to cook for him in the middle of the night and if she would not he would hit her about the shoulders and neck,” recalled Gladys Ogolah.

“Ruth would run screaming down the road to our house crying. She was tired of being hit and tired of being called names. She had a very, very rough time and I was always worried about her.”

As a boy, Mark Ndesandjo was fearful of his towering father and tried hard to stay out of his way so he would not inadvertently trigger his rage.

“What I felt from him was coldness. There was fear. That is what I recall,” Ndesandjo said in an interview.

“I was physically afraid of him. He was a large looming man and you did not know what to expect. Is he going to hit you or your mother or other people in your family? He did not smile except when he was drinking or when he was with friends.”

Anxious as to what their father’s condition would be on his return home each night, the children passed the afternoon following school with mounting apprehension.

“Everyone in the house was totally on edge because you never knew when my father would be back,” Ndesandjo said in an interview. “When he got there he would probably be drunk.”

And then the light would go on and you would hear thuds and shouts and my mother’s voice rising and crying and screaming.

You would hear sounds like falling objects and it would go on and on and on and on. I instinctively bonded with my mother because she was afraid and she was also very protective of me. And that made my father even angrier.

He resented me because we were both now competing for my mother’s attention. I was my mother’s firstborn and she had shifted some of her attention away from him to me. Sometimes when she was holding me, he would shout at her, ‘Stop tending to that brat.’”

Nor was Obama’s abuse of Ruth confined to their home. As he became increasingly careless about shielding his attraction to other women, Obama repeatedly humiliated his wife in public.

“He would criticise me and flirt with other women right in front of me. Always, there were other women,” Ruth sighed.

“He took great pleasure in demeaning me because it made him feel better.” Ruth endured for two reasons.

The first was Mark Okoth, and the second would be named David Opiyo.

Within a few months of their return to Nairobi, Ruth learned that she was pregnant again and thus linked ever more inextricably to her husband.

Obama had made it clear to her that if she ever left him, he would prohibit her from seeing their children, and in Kenya’s patriarchal culture she had little doubt that he could do so easily.

Determined to raise her children as best she could while struggling to preserve the marriage that had produced them, Ruth took stock of her situation. Her job at Nestlé continued to provide both a professional outlet and much-needed emotional support.

Best of all, it gave her a source of self esteem that she was not finding at home. She also had an extensive network of friends, some of whom strongly urged her to take the children and flee under cover of night.

But Obama had never struck any of the children.

As long as it was only she upon whom he inflicted his rage, she felt she could manage. But it wasn’t easy.

One night Obama came home drunk as usual, but this time he had a pretty young woman clinging to his arm. It was not the first time he had done so. In the past Ruth had simply turned tearfully away as Obama and his woman friend slipped into one of the bedrooms together.

But on this particular night Obama insisted that Ruth leave their house so that he could use their marriage bed without her interfering. He was, after all, a Luo and had a right to any woman he might desire, he declared, his voice growing steadily louder.

But this time Ruth put her foot down. She refused to move anywhere, and as she screamed out her hurt, the neighbours, as ever, got an earful.

One of those neighbours was Achieng Oneko, one of the Kapenguria Six who were convicted in 1952 of supporting the Mau Mau rebels along with Kenyatta and sentenced to seven years in prison.

Oneko, who had abandoned his old cellmate to join Odinga and the Kenya People’s Union, was a legendary freedom fighter and a pioneering newspaper editor.

He was also a former Maseno student, although he attended many years before Obama.

Upset by the Obamas’ domestic furor, Oneko picked up the telephone and called his friend Ndolo Ayah. “He said, ‘You young people, you better talk to that friend of yours, Barack. He’s making a mess of himself,’” Ayah recounted. “So I got another friend of mine and we headed on over to Obama’s place to see what we could do.”

The situation was chaotic. Ruth was screaming so forcefully that it took her awhile to realise that there were visitors in the house. Obama was drunkenly explaining to her that, according to Luo tradition, “he could bring any woman into the house at any time.” said Ayah.

“I said, well, he comes from a different Luo group than ourselves because we are Luo and you don’t do this kind of thing. We tried to get Barack to come to Oneko’s place so we could talk it out but he just told us to go to hell, you know. And so we left. I suppose at some level we felt it was none of our business.”

Marriage strained

As his marriage with Ruth grew increasingly strained, Obama turned to his first wife, Kezia, for solace?at least that is what she maintains. While working as a waitress in a Mombasa restaurant in the late 1960s, Kezia says that Obama occasionally visited her when he passed through town on business.

As Ruth understood him, Obama’s reckless behaviours stemmed from a couple of sources.

The first were the rich and varied temptations of Nairobi life in the years after independence. Although Obama had managed to curb his more extreme inclinations while under scrutiny in the United States, once he returned to Kenya in the heady days of the mid-1960s, it was another story. On a scholarship in America, she noted, “he was being judged on a daily basis. He had to behave properly. There were parameters. But once he was back in Kenya and all his friends are saying,

‘Let’s go for the drink, let’s go dancing, let’s go find some women, let’s do this and that,’ he couldn’t hold back. All those pressures were too much for him. He just didn’t have the strength of character to resist.

And the more he succumbed, the more he succumbed.”

But Ruth believes the greater source of Obama’s undoing lay deeply embedded in his gnawing lack of faith in himself, exacerbated by the perils of Kenyan politics. Kenyatta’s chokehold on matters of state meant that little could happen without his sanction or that of members of his inner circle.

Obama had already been blackballed for his aggressive critique of Sessional Paper No. 10, and his critical commentary at Central Bank hadn’t helped matters. Much as he yearned to be a Big Man, Obama was far from it.

That his fortunes were dependent on favours from others and the shifting sands of Kenya’s powerful elites made matters only worse. Indeed, since his collision with Harvard administrators, he had found the doors to power closed to him at almost every turn.

Uncertainty, coupled with the Luo habit of self-inflation, drove him to chronic exaggeration intended to compensate for his perceived shortcomings. Although Obama had abundant company in his heavy drinking, he was driven by more than the cultural excesses of the moment. Also contributing to his dark mood was the evolving cast of Kenyatta’s inner circle, ever more authoritarian and intolerant of challenge. By the end of 1967 the mushrooming political schism between Kenyatta and the radicals led by Oginga Odinga had distinctly worsened.

Between 1966 and 1969 Kenyatta moved to stymie the opposition and isolate his Luo challengers.

With Odinga now effectively marginalised, Kenyatta’s Kikuyu coterie began to look increasingly askance at Tom Mboya, who now stood as the likely heir apparent. Mboya was not only immensely popular among a broad swath of trade union members and members of parliament but was also believed to have the critical support of the Western countries, particularly the United States.

As the aging Kenyatta’s health began to deteriorate, many Kikuyus were increasingly alarmed at the possibility of the presidency falling to a non-Kikuyu. Rumours about Mboya’s political intentions were rampant. That he was interested in the presidency was no secret. Some whispered that he was forging a secret alliance with Odinga to assume a spot within the KPU.

Others suspected a more devious agenda.

Either way, the hostility of Kenyatta’s inner circle toward Mboya escalated rapidly.

Unlike many who threw their lot with either one of the two Luo giants, Odinga or Mboya, Obama retained ties with both political camps, as he was drawn to aspects of each of their platforms. As he had expressed so forcefully in his critique of Sessional Paper No. 10, Obama believed that certain socialist principles that Odinga articulated should be a feature of the country’s economic underpinnings.

But he also saw a place for the capitalist principles that the West-leaning Mboya espoused. He was particularly incensed at the factions within KANU that were seeking to undermine Mboya, their own party’s secretary-general.

Mboya’s exalted cyle

Although removed from Mboya’s exalted circle, Obama continued to look to Mboya for guidance. Their relationship had grown more distant over the years as Mboya’s star rose ever higher, but they nonetheless maintained a friendship throughout. Mboya’s increasing political isolation gave Obama one more reason for dismay.

Like others disillusioned with the government’s performance, Obama regarded Kenyatta as a bitter disappointment. In the months after he returned with Ruth, it seemed that much of what he had long dreamed for his country had failed to materialize.

Far from standing as a boldly independent African nation, dependence on foreign capital still hobbled Kenya.

At the same time, its domestic assets were being amassed in the hands of a privileged few.

Obama was an economist who believed that free enterprise played a critical role in a democracy, but he also had a deep respect for African communalism. He felt strongly that the majority should share in the country’s bounty. Instead, he saw unfettered capitalism and, increasingly, a rampant tribalism eroding the promises of uhuru.

Although Obama clearly had difficulty with authority of any kind, he was hardly alone in believing that his own Luo roots were coming to be a distinct liability. As he grew increasingly frustrated with the Kikuyus’ tight grip on the country’s politics, he began to drink ever more heavily.

His frustration with the country’s course coupled with his own personal failure to attain the heights that he believed should have been within easy reach were fast congealing into an acid stew of resentment.

To be continued — Fom Nation Newspaper Online, Kenya

By LUCAS BARASA, NationMedia Newspapers

Prime Minister Raila Odinga last Sunday ordered the arrest of gay couples. Addressing a rally at Kamukunji grounds in his Langata Constituency, the PM said their behaviour was unnatural. “If found the homosexuals should be arrested and taken to relevant authorities,” Mr Odinga said.

   Prime Minister Raila Odinga addresses a rally in Kamukunji, Nairobi on November 28, 2010.

The PM thrilled the crowd when he asserted that the recent census showed there were more women than men and there was no need for same sex relationships.

He said it was madness for a man to fall in love with another man while there were plenty of women and added that there was no need for women to engage in lesbianism yet they can bear children.

Mr Odinga’s statement is likely to rub activists the wrong way since they recently went public to campaign against homophobia.

The remarks also come months after Special Programmes Minister Esther Murugi attracted the wrath of Kenyans for calling for recognition and acceptance of gays.

On Sunday, Mr Odinga accused the ‘No’ team of misleading Kenyans during the campaigns that the new constitution recognises same sex relationships.

He said the group opposed to the new constitution was wrong when they implied that that the document would promote abortion.

Mr Odinga said the new Constitution is the most progressive in the world and took issue with Suspended Higher Education Minister William Ruto for going round the country thanking people for voting ‘No’ yet “the constitution passed long time ago.”

The Eldoret North MP was the defacto leader of group opposed to new constitution.

Mr Odinga said the balls is now in leaders and government court to implement the new constitution so that Kenyans could enjoy its benefits.

He said the government is capable of resolving rows that have threatened to delay or hinder the implementation of new constitution.

The PM also refuted the inclusion of Kamukunji as an outlawed group.

“Kamukunji is a lawful organisation. As the Prime Minister of Kenya I have said Kamukunji is is a lawful organisation,” Mr Odinga said.

Nominated MP Millie Odhiambo who concurred with the PM said the law on organised crime must comply with the constitution.

She said the Kamukunji group, whose members contribute Sh20 every Sunday, was free to meet and that police should stop unlawful harassment.

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Reference: Missionaries of Hate: Right-Wing Terrorism in Africa; American (Republican) Evangelicals Promote Homophobic HATE in Uganda
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Eat da poo poo! (Remix)

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By Gwada Ogot

   Gwada Ogot
Josiah Mwangi Kariuki (JM) is arguably Kenya’s most conscientious political leader ever. He was murdered on 2nd March 1975 by suspected government agents. His legacy remains strong in Kenya and a memorial service in his honor has been commemorated annually since his death. His hallowed vision for Kenya is captured in the following words he wrote: “It takes more than a national anthem, however stirring and a national court of arms, however distinctive, a national flag, however appropriate and a national flower, however beautiful, to make a nation.”

The statement is a search for a missing component of leadership, the quality of being humane.

His demands for social justice cost him his life. This is a factual prospect that faces any leader who attempts to rock the pirate ship of the status quo in Kenya, but one worth every drop of effort and every spot of risk. The call to national duty is not optional.

Great nation’s rise by great innovations and Innovation elevates quality ensuring comprehensive national profit. Great leaders too fire national consciousness enhancing the prisms through which the citizenry views itself and others in tandem. No sane nation pegs its resurrection on feigned salvation or neither the import of its false promises nor compromises on its own logic of posterity.

In Kenya, colonial military and psychological warfare facilitated the plunder of our minds, culture and natural resources. The redemptive acts against these foreign buccaneers were locally mediated by justified blood and iron which forced round table negotiations.

Neo-Colonial leadership maintains the pillage insuring itself via strategic ethnic profiling. The net result being that poor leadership stimulates national anger and frustration. It also cultivates mistrust and suspicion amongst the population. In the process, they facilitate continued domination and insulate their bounty by keeping the masses in conflict. The nation is caught in the rebellious grip of false prophets of change and reform mercenaries who thrive on crisis and confusion. It is essential to infuse integrity and order into the reform effort devoid of low brinkmanship, cheap propaganda and vested political interests. Freedom from national malignance is imperative. With liberty a clear obligation, how and when the citizenry intervenes, on behalf of the nation will be determined by the measured actions of its new leaders. Matters of food security, economic liberation, land reform, policy overhaul and institutionalization of patriotism must take precedence over the needless brouhaha of political bickering.

The short distance we have so far covered as a nation is directly proportional to the short-sightedness of our leadership. The scoundrels in power have taken us as far as they possibly visualize and can therefore see no further. The nation must look beyond them towards the alluring future to which they do not belong. Crafting your future is not a charade or a convenience, neither is it an act or simulation, nor is it a test or experiment and it definitely is not, a contest between popularity and principle. It is a new order that reconstitutes conservative beliefs, restructures society, restores national prestige and power and renews national sense of responsibility and responsibility.

It goes beyond impulsive press conferences, quick city marches and other forms of showy national protests, a national movement is requisite. Despite popular use of all these dramatic techniques, nothing has changed or changes. These are surface appliances which attract surface responses. The activists act in expected manner and the police respond in routine fashion. So corruption, in its every conceivable shade continues with unabated impunity as the people watch the brotherhood in a feast of fury.

“It is an amazing fact but one amply attested that some human beings have an infinite capacity to endure injustice without retaliation and apparently without resentment against their oppressors. Instances of this phenomenon are numerous and they come from every part of the world where one group dominates another. Militant leaders of protest movements have been driven to despair by the apathy they have encountered among those they would lead to freedom; Members of dominant groups have often commented on the cheerfulness and loyalty they observe among those who would seem to have no reason for such sentiments.”

The above passage drawn from Harry M Johnson’s book, Introduction to Sociology, aptly describes a puzzling trend in need of an appropriate social prescription. A serious national introspection that may help explain why we are where we are today and in addition help project where we want to be as a nation tomorrow. The desire of the people to move on is strong but conditional and must be without the current crop of leaders. More so, for a people who completely surrender national common sense to the same known political pirates at every election, such examination is inevitably urgent.

Back at the yard, the malignance of ethnic slush is as always prominent, influencing trade, rental occupation of buildings, access to private and public services and determines a considerable part of national relations. Even critical policy decisions that govern institutions of higher learning, research, planning and implementation suffers such biased degradations. These actions cement the path for illicit personal aggrandizement; vital cogs in the corruption wheel of fortune. As a result, honest effort is repudiated and national growth ultimately stunts. Civility in the mean time was long deleted from the national memory disk.

The darkness of our imperial rape cannot however dim the light of future national prospects. There is no doubt that beyond our national social degeneration lies untapped a well of moral prosperity. Every Kenyan is consciously aware, that somewhere within our national hearts, someplace, wherever within our national quarters, there lives a flowing fountain of peace not perfect but gratifying, a warm acceptance for each other, based on a true feeling that we so often ignore, and a spirit so strong, it tolerates the worst of our national character. Feelings of patriotism ring not only from exploits over others but also in victory paeans over a self inflicted leadership plague.

How have we, if at all, combated poverty, unemployment, landlessness, insecurity, a lack of patriotism, social irresponsibility, ethnicity, natural and artificial vagaries, scarcity of clean water and all the myriad challenges daily facing our nation? At what point do Kenyans stop the nightmare which we all actively simulate? Or do we have to wait until that moment when we have milked all parastatal dry, raped all our women sore, killed all the able men, retold our lofty reform tales, cut the last of juicy deals and consumed every available national confidence and resource? Then onto ourselves we will turn, each one of us coldly aware of our very dark capacities.

Patriotism shows gratitude to ones nation, a union of its nationals, their personal aspirations and national understanding irrespective of what may have been spoken of each other, thought of one another, or inflicted one upon the other. In matters of conscience such as these, the people have no choice.

The entire Kenyan public is today reduced to a gleeful voyeur as elected leadership plunders the country in ways coarser than those of the colonial buccaneer, raids national coffers, steals stores constitutionally entrusted upon it, speculates with national lands, incites civil strife, and sells the national soul for silver and gold. Indeed it is the Kenyans people who stand accused of being moribund and ineffective and not its expired leadership. A people who vote in buccaneers for leaders then go on to actively complain about it have nothing to mitigate on their behalf. What is the expected state of a nation that habitually elects criminals, canonizes murderers, and honors infidels?

In central province, the peasant Kikuyu farmer forever lives helpless at the mercy of bloody gangs and conniving middlemen, the artificial poverty of Nyanza decays a whole people yet pays dividends to the leaders, the unjustifiable waste of North Eastern province, her hunger, thirst and pain, the seismic conflicts of the rift valley and their latency for recurrence, the freewheeling spiral of Nairobi into modern Sodom and Gomorrah, unfair land allocations at the coast all point to a nation gone awry. Yet we all look the other way as the clouds darken above us. Former American President, George Kennedy gave the prophetic warning that, “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

Punishment, within its legal context, is an integral part of any social reform process. It is the only way for those who obtain public confidence by false pretenses and who commit indecent assault on society. Prosecution of leaders who have exhibited exhaustive mastery of every perversion from opulence, insolence, prostitution, devil worship, drug dealing, perjury, murder and theft is fair path for any country seeking renaissance.? Only by jumping over the soaring stile of justice can Kenya embrace the new and beckoning beginning. In this regard, there are no short cuts.

Author Colin Wilson in his masterpiece, the Criminal history of Mankind, writes of British revenge against a decade of swaggering Roman brutality, “they hung up naked the most noble and distinguished women and they cut off their breasts and sewed them into their mouths in order to make the victims appear to be eating them; afterwards they impaled the women on sharp skewers run lengthwise through their bodies. ‘These atrocities probably had a ritual element-not unlike the Mau Mau in modern times. The men were treated with similar ferocity.” Atrocious acts such as these are also today regular features of Kenyan society including be-headings and skinning of victims. To make matters worse, they are on an upsurge and threaten the entire fabric of our national existence as a nation. The choices for Kenyans is starkly clear- either embrace these hideous forms of vengeance or revert to the due process of law which punishes crime indiscriminately.

For a nation deficient in unity of purpose and without a common national vision, our national psyche as a people remains hostage to the political ping pong of unscrupulous leaders who profit from induced national morass. In the process, patriotism is ridiculed as a domain for the realistically weak and ethnically infirm. Tribal bigotry and malevolent innuendo are ironically proffered as suitable substitutes, lairs for the strong tribes’ people in a 21st century nation.

Greater national cohesion, a dream so long held by Kenyans and it’s still hoped for fulfillment, likewise hurts at the will of rudimentary forces preaching tribal domination and economic strangulation within its very borders. The polarizing credos of the political elite, cooked for self sustenance fuels national socio-economic decay at the peoples dear expense. Yet we will overcome for the ailment has been nationally diagnosed and the antidote of a new leadership prescribed to save our country Kenya.

This illuminating light shines at the end of the tunnel for our nation. Even though we acknowledge that our leaders may have thrown out the bath water with the baby and soap, the Kenyan people retain in their hands the basin of togetherness, an integral ingredient that defines our shared senses. So strong are the bonds of a people’s common experiences, a people’s joy and tears together, a people’s hopes and desires as one, and an overwhelming wish for peace and reliable progress together. To harness the potency of a people’s power, the injection of a new leadership is requisite.

The world around us is changing and we must compel ourselves to change with it. The country is up to its neck in the behavioral sink besieged by crippling official corruption, confirmed lack of leadership, foresight and habitual impunity. These are the humiliating hallmarks of the trap we today call our national government. Kenya can sink no further for there is no where left to sink. From the nadir we currently find ourselves in, the country can only arise.

To the elders who possess the lessons of yesterday, to the middle aged whose responsibility is today and to the youth in whom potential lies, for inspirational direction I share with you the words of tribute paid to Republican senator George Norris of Nebraska in September 1932 by Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith as written in Profiles of courage, a book by John F Kennedy,”History asks,” Did the man have integrity? Did the man have unselfishness? Did the man have courage? Did the man have consistency?

To JM Kariuki all four questions are robustly answered in the affirmative. What will your answers look like at the inevitable trial of conscience?

To you all these questions will ultimately be directed by your conscience, by your children and children’s children in regard to what you did when Kenya was rotting and what you did to help resuscitate Kenya and pray what you do today aids correct answers.

The early bird catches the worm — the Kenyan public has for far too long played worm for manipulative political leaders. Are you the early bird that catches the worm or are you the early worm caught by the bird?” Information communication is the answer. Information is power.

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   Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis [ Enlarge ]
The recent riots (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7935470.stm) in the Kenyan capital only highlight the impossibility of the artificial colonial state to continue existing.

Of course, had Somalia been a Christian state, Kenya would have never been created.

The colonial state of Kenya represents only the anti-Islamic need of criminal, heinous, racist and perfidious England to divide the Muslims of the Eastern Africa coast, and to segregate them in various fictional realms like Kenya and Tanzania whereby the Eastern African Muslims would miraculously be transformed into “minorities“.

In fact, Kenya cannot and will not exist as a unitary state in the same way Abyssinia, the world’s most criminal state, is doomed to collapse and get decomposed into many independent, national states.

The aforementioned does not necessarily imply that various Eastern African nations could not have formed diverse confederations whereby many different nations and peoples would coexist in peace and harmony; this could have been the case, had the various indigenous nations agreed in terms of parity, equity, and justice. However, this did not happen.

In the case of the infamous colonial fossil ‘Abyssinia’ (fallaciously re-baptized “Ethiopia”), there was a series of military invasions that always ended up in national and/or spiritual genocides (for the subdued Oromos, Afars, Sidamas, Ogadenis, Shekachos, Kaffas, Kambaatas, Hadiyas, Gedeos, Anuak, Nuer, Agaw, Shinasha, Berta and Gumuz).

In the case of the colonial territories of Kenya and Tanzania, the colonizers were Europeans (Portuguese, English and Germans); the colonial agreements between the English racist administration and selected tribal leaders, who – corrupt, bribed and besotted – accepted to play the shameful role of the local tyrant who is at the same time the shameful puppet of the colonial masters, helped establish tyrannical regimes that constitute a real hell for the outright majority of the subjugated nations.

By calling the subjugated nations of the Luos, Somalis, and Oromos of Kenya merely “local populations”, by minimizing the importance and the dramatic nature of the events that take place in Eastern Africa, and by shifting the focus on secluded spots – called “exotic resorts” -, the Western mass media perpetrate a heinous act and a voluntary genocide against the subjugated nations of Kenya who struggle for national independence, cultural integrity, sociopolitical freedom, and economic self-determination.

At the same time, the Western mass media bear witness to the Anti-Christian character of their endeavours, as they resonate lies, criminal falsehood, and deceit – only to serve the purposes of the Apostate Freemasonic Lodge that truly controls the Western establishments.

Only to be proven mendacious by the following reports of the leading humanitarian organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) that I republish here integrally.

There is only one sentence all the people of the world have to know about Kenya:

The will of the outright majority of the subjugated nations that have been entrapped in the Prison “Kenya” passionately desire to see the Kenyan state as soon as possible broken down to many pieces so that every indigenous nation be able to form their own nationhood. Democracy, freedom, and development will only then become feasible.

Kenya: Killing of Activists Needs Independent Inquiry

Lethal Force Against Students Protesting the Killing Underscores Need for Police Reform
March 6

“When police enter a university campus with guns blazing, the need for urgent police reform and accountability is obvious”.

Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch

(New York) – The Kenyan government should immediately establish an independent investigation into the killings on March 5, 2009, of two prominent Kenyan human rights activists, Human Rights Watch said today. The police’s use of unnecessary lethal force against students protesting the killings, resulting in one student’s death, also highlights the need for the government to carry out promptly United Nations recommendations on police reform, Human Rights Watch said.

On the evening of March 5 near the University of Nairobi, unidentified gunmen blocked the car of Oscar Kamau Kingara and John Paul Oulu of the Oscar Foundation Free Legal Aid Clinic and shot them dead. The Oscar Foundation has frequently and publicly criticized the police for their participation in extrajudicial killings and other serious abuses, most recently before parliament in February 2009.

“The murder of two activists long critical of police abuses demands an inquiry that is not under the control of the police,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “An independent inquiry is the only way to reach the truth and ensure justice for this horrible crime.”

Following the killings, several hundred University of Nairobi students held a demonstration protesting the killings that evening. Demonstrators told Human Rights Watch that they believed the government was responsible for the attack. Students took the bullet-riddled car and the body of Kingara onto campus, refusing to surrender his body to police. A standoff ensued between a large contingent of police who demanded that the body be handed over and the angry, but largely peaceful, demonstrators.

After negotiations broke down, Human Rights Watch witnessed scores of police officers storming the campus using tear gas and firing live ammunition. Students retaliated by throwing stones at the police. As the police pursued students carrying Kingara’s body across the campus, gunfire became more and more frequent.

Human Rights Watch observed some officers firing into the air, but one student was shot dead by the police. The police confirmed the student’s death in a statement today concluding that the use of lethal force was “unprofessional and uncalled for,” and noting that three officers who used live ammunition at the protest are “under investigation.”

In policing demonstrations, the Kenyan police should abide by the United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, Human Rights Watch said. The principles call upon law enforcement officials to apply nonviolent means before resorting to the use of force, to use force only in proportion to the seriousness of the offense, and to use lethal force only when strictly unavoidable to protect life.

Human Rights Watch called on the Kenyan government to implement immediately the recommendations for police reform proposed by Kenyan Justice Philip Nyamu Waki, head of an independent commission that investigated post-election violence in 2008, and those by Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings.

Those recommendations include a public acknowledgement by President Mwai Kibaki of the problem of extrajudicial killings, the need for sweeping reform of the police, the setting-up of an independent police oversight board, the replacement of both the police commissioner and the attorney general, and the establishment of a special tribunal to prosecute those responsible for post-election violence, including victims of police lethal force.

“When police enter a university campus with guns blazing, the need for urgent police reform and accountability is obvious,” said Gagnon. “Kenyans need a police force that protects their rights, not one that abuses them.”

Background

In 2007 the Oscar Foundation published a report on extrajudicial killings by the Kenyan police, “License to kill: Extrajudicial execution and police brutality in Kenya.” The Oscar Foundation activists had also testified to Parliament in early 2009 on extrajudicial killings.

The killings of Kingara and Oulu came on a day of heightened tensions over the February 2009 report of UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial killings Philip Alston into extra-judicial killings in Kenya. Alston’s report concluded that, “the Kenyan police are a law unto themselves and they kill often and with impunity.”

Weeks before, Alston had met with Kingara and Oulu, among others, to collect evidence of police killings of alleged members of the Mungiki sect, a religious group that has turned into a criminal organization. Members and sympathizers of the Mungiki had held demonstrations across Nairobi and the town of Naivasha earlier on in the day when Kingara and Oulu were killed.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga responded to the killings of Kingara and Oulu with a statement today saying that the police are suspects in these killings and asserting the need for an independent agency to carry out an investigation.

Kenya: End Police Use of Excessive Force

Lift Ban on Public Rallies, Media Broadcasts
January 12, 2008

The Kenyan government should urgently and publicly order the police to stop using excessive, lethal force against public rallies, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch urged political leaders on all sides to call on supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

Opposition leaders have called for rallies next week in defiance of the government’s broad ban on public gatherings, prompting concerns that new clashes could result in further deaths and injuries. Human Rights Watch is also concerned by ongoing violence in the Rift Valley, where hundreds of people have died and hundreds of thousands have been displaced.

“Kenyan security forces have a duty to rein in criminal violence and should protect people, but they shouldn’t turn their weapons on peaceful protestors,” said Georgette Gagnon, acting Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should make it very clear that police will be held to account for using lethal force against people for simply expressing political views.”

Since the disputed December 27, 2007 presidential elections, Kenyan police in several cities have used live ammunition to disperse protesters and disperse looters, killing and wounding dozens. Some observers and even police have described the police response as an unofficial “shoot to kill” policy. For example, Human Rights Watch received credible reports that in Kisumu dozens of people were shot dead by police while demonstrating against the election result announced on December 31.

Even people who did not attend rallies have been affected. Human Rights Watch spoke to eyewitnesses in Nairobi who saw unarmed individuals hit by police gunfire on the fringes of protests in the Kibera and Mathare slums. One woman was hit by stray bullets that penetrated the wall of her home. Another unarmed man was shot in the leg. A boy watching a protest from the door of his house was shot in the chest. Kenyan human rights organizations reported deaths and injuries involving police in the cities of Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, and Eldoret.

A source within the police, who was unwilling to be identified, told Human Rights Watch that “many of us are unhappy with what we are being asked to do. This ‘shoot to kill’ policy is illegal, and it is not right. We have brothers and sisters, sons and daughters out there.”

In policing demonstrations, the Kenyan police should abide by the United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, Human Rights Watch said. The principles call upon law enforcement officials to apply nonviolent means before resorting to the use of force only in proportion to the seriousness of the offense, and to use lethal force only when strictly unavoidable to protect life.

Kenyan and international law prohibits a general ban on demonstrations. Under Kenyan law, those wishing to demonstrate must notify the police and the police can reject the request on the grounds of public order, but no law permits the authorities to impose a blanket ban on public assembly. Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Kenya ratified in 1976, a state may only impose restrictions on the right to peaceful assembly that are strictly necessary to maintain public order.

“The government should defuse tension by immediately lifting the ban on public assembly and allowing the planned demonstrations to go ahead,” said Gagnon. “The right to peaceful assembly is a cornerstone of a healthy democracy.”

The government has also banned live political broadcasting. Human Rights Watch again urged the Kenyan authorities to immediately lift unnecessary restrictions on media freedom.

Human Rights Watch also called on the government to immediately investigate the deaths that have already occurred during protests and in the Rift Valley. Prosecutions should be carried out where there is evidence of wrongdoing and the victims should be provided an adequate remedy, including compensation.

Background

Kenyans voted peacefully and in record numbers in parliamentary and presidential elections on December 27. In the parliamentary elections, 99 of the 210 seats were won by the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). Vice-President Moody Awori and 14 of President Mwai Kibaki’s top ministers lost their seats.

The presidential election pitted Kibaki against the ODM’s Raila Odinga, and the presidential vote count appeared to be tampered with. The chairman of the Electoral Commission of Kenya said that he did “not know whether Mr. Kibaki won the elections.” The European Union Electoral Mission also expressed grave doubts about the legitimacy of the presidential results.

Talks between the opposition and the Kibaki government have not yet occurred and the opposition is planning for further mass action across the country on January 16, 2008. Further violence is expected as the government has indicated it will attempt to prevent the demonstrations from occurring.

Violence has spread throughout the Rift Valley and the west of the country as angry citizens have burnt and looted factories, shops and homes and chased away those perceived to be supporters of Kibaki (mostly, but not exclusively, members of his Kikuyu tribe). Kikuyu homes in the Rift Valley have been selectively burned and Kikuyu residents killed. Thirty people were burned to death in a church near Eldoret. According to media reports, the mortuary in Eldoret contains 290 bodies killed as a result of the violence, and Kisumu has 91. Nationwide, government figures put the death toll at 486 but independent estimates range as high as 600.

Further readings: — http://oscarfound.org/

Note: A customary scenery in the streets of Kenya that does not usually find its way to the leading circulation newspapers in Europe, England and America, probably because Kenyan slums are not considered as ….. Kenya by the colonial establishmnets. From: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/17/2141084.htm

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By GITAU WARIGI

It is totally pointless to reshuffle a Cabinet and fail to make heads roll for the starvation millions in the country are facing.

Chiding ministers for speaking out of turn and making them write apology letters when the persons responsible for this food emergency remain seated in that same Cabinet does not make the problem go away.

YOUR WORRY SHOULD NOT BE THAT ministers are making all manner of accusations. Your main concern, rather, should be what illegality some have been engaging in behind your back.

The obvious message communicated from the Thursday Cabinet meeting is that the government’s priority concern is to keep Cabinet disagreements under wraps so that the dirty linen does not get exposed.

Dealing with those behind the scandalous wheeler-dealing in maize and other things can wait.

I have a very angry problem with the reasoning that to manage the Grand Coalition in such a way that it doesn’t blow up requires turning a blind eye to criminality of the worst sort.

Some people scam the maize from our strategic reserve. The country now faces starvation. But since we don’t want to rock the boat, we gloss over the thievery and move on. Too bad some people will die of hunger. It’s called collateral damage.

I BURST OUT LAUGHING WHEN I heard the President and his Cabinet went begging before foreign ambassadors for food aid. The comedy was not about the expensive motorcades the press got hysterical about.

The comedy was about the President apologetically admitting there were rogues in his government as he pleaded for alms.

And the top ones were sitting right there with him.

Only he cannot see the irony of begging when the thieves responsible for the situation remain well ensconced in the system.

How can you honestly expect somebody to help you when you are still hosting in your house the thief who stole your food?

If I was in the donors’ position, why should I listen when you show no inclination or competence for executive house-cleaning?

On Wednesday, the Internal Security minister told the nation that the culprits ? who he admitted included MPs ? would appear in court this week.

I HAVE NOT SEEN ANY SO ARRAIGNED and I am not in the slightest bit surprised. The President is blissfully glum, as is his habit. He shows no care in the world except for the tit-tat between ministers which annoys him so much.

If he knows there are rogues within, only God knows why he doesn’t act against them as the country begins to starve. And we are expected to endure four more years of this aimless, crisis-to-crisis drift?

Last week in Parliament, the minister for Agriculture tabled with some fanfare a list of 3,000 entities who bought maize from the National Cereals and Produce Board in the recent past.

The list is undergoing scrutiny and the results of this are to be known on Wednesday. Before that is done, no one can say with certainty whether these buyers are legitimate, or if they are even millers.

Any street huckster knows the first thing to do is to register a dummy company whenever he or she wants to carry out some shady business deal with a parastatal.

UNLESS HE IS INCURABLY DAFT, HIS name doesn’t have to appear anywhere in the registration document.

Normally, NCPB releases maize only to millers. The question Parliament must ask as it verifies the particulars of the 3,000 buyers is what milling capacity each and every one of them has compared to the size of the maize quota they were allocated.

Their capacity in distribution should also be taken into account. In other words, if you operate just a small posho mill in Endebess and you go seeking for 50,000 bags of maize from NCPB, then there is excellent reason for people to smell a rat.

THE USUAL CIVIL SOCIETY “WATCHDOGS” have been strangely silent as what is a largely man-made famine unravels.

Where matters stand, it is totally unacceptable to rationalise the inertia in sacking culprits on the grounds that no one partner in the grand coalition has the power to act unilaterally against the other side.

If the two sides cannot agree on the simple matter of who should take responsibility for the food emergency, then it is surely time to say enough to this hypocritical and parasitic coalition.

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