By Kap Kirwok

Here is a sad truism about our country: Shame is dead. Well, almost. This is not breaking news, I know; but have you noticed that whatever remains of shame is being buried along with humility, integrity and love of country?

Have you noticed the giant twin monuments of greed and impunity we have erected on the graveyards of wisdom and honour?

Greed, impunity, smallness of mind, and indifference to suffering: these are the tenets of what appears to be the fastest growing religion this side of the misery kingdom. It is a gospel practiced by the political apostolate and encouraged by a chorus of hosannas from the power elite and tribal congregations.

Shame and honour are endangered and may soon be extinct. How do we know this?

We know it is when Government officials squander public resources on useless foreign trips at a time the country is in the grip of famine.

We know it when, while the Government declares a “disaster” and begs the world for food, grain reserves are looted for personal gain.

We know it when the findings of an expensive commission set up to investigate the irregular sale of a hotel are ignored and those most culpable rewarded with ministerial positions.

We know that integrity and executive competence are in terminal decline when political cronies in their mid 70s continue to head Government state enterprises when younger, qualified Kenyans are available.

You can tell the depth of shamelessness to which we have sunk when our business and academic elite go to the World Economic Forum to ‘intelligently‘ talk about the ‘State of Africa‘, and return home to promote narrow ethnic interests.

In a recent article, Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai argued the presidency is not to blame for out-of-control corruption and greed. She put the blame on a faulty constitution. Really? Does she really believe that a new constitution is a substitute for leadership integrity and competence? Those with executive power serially ignore the current laws.

Stand against Moi regime

I suspect the good woman was merely doing a complicated tap-dance around the truth. This would be unfortunate. We do not want to associate the illustrious professor with cowardice and political apologetics, would we? After all, it was her fearless stand against Moi’s regime that helped build her reputation as a courageous freedom fighter ? a reputation that was partly responsible for the Nobel Prize.

There was also the curious statement by Michael Ranneberger, the United States ambassador to Kenya, defending Government efforts in fighting corruption.

Later, in the company of other envoys, he appeared to reverse course. Will someone tell the ambassador to please kindly zip-up? Kenyans know the hanky-panky and highly suspect role he played in the 2007 presidential elections and its tragic outcome. Enough of your wisdom sir.

But we cannot be too hard on the ambassador. He is, after all, trying to secure the interests of his country ? however baffling his methods may appear to us. It is up to us to secure our own.

Can anything be done about greed, executive incompetence and impunity?

Some think the answer is in a national conference, ‘The Kenya We Want‘. I have no quarrel with conferences if they are structured to actually achieve tangible results. But I think we have our priorities wrong.

Kenya we want

For a start, if we must have a conference, let it be called “How to Get the Kenya We Want”.

We know what kind of Kenya we want; it is getting it that is the problem. For this reason, I think the conference should have been an internal affair focused on the question: “Can We Advance National Interests through Pursuit of Narrow Ethnic Interests?”

The participants should have been economic and academic elite in general and tribal think-tanks in particular. The sooner we have such a conference the better.

Do we really need foreigners to tell us why Molo Town has no fire engine? We need a frank and open discussion about ethnically-motivated and elite-enabled greed, impunity and executive incompetence. This is the real issue. Why dance around it?

I have a question for the elite (myself included): when we dine and wine in posh clubs and hotels at home and overseas, what do we really think about those horrid pictures of poverty-stricken Kenyans living like wild dogs?

And to the mass media: Thanks for your service to the country, but remember that a steady drumbeat of depressing news soon becomes harmless background noise. New, creative approaches are needed to continuously jolt the nation into shame and action.

Do not allow shame to die.

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He went to Kenya to discredit Barack Obama and to sell a book full of garbage and bigoted innuendo, but was kicked out of the country Tuesday night.

Immigration officer Dume Wanda (right) leads Dr Jerome Corsi, the WorldNetDaily writer and author of The Obama Nation, to a waiting security vehicle at Laico Regency hotel, on Tuesday.

Jerome Corsi was arrested shortly after 8a.m. just as he was about to address a news conference to launch his anti-Obama book in Nairobi.

He was taken to the Immigration headquarters at Nyayo House and later deported on the British Airways midnight flight out of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

Dr Corsi, author of The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, which has been heavily criticised worldwide for its inaccuracies, came to Kenya more than a week ago, and had been staying with friends in Runda.

Radical Islam

He was due to launch the book, which depicts Mr Obama, whose father was Kenyan, as a sympathizer of radical Islam and communism, at the Laico Regency Hotel.

But he was arrested there before he could speak and driven with an assistant, Mr Timothy M. Bueler, to Nyayo House, around 500 metres away.

The Immigration officials also impounded copies of the Obama book.

At Nyayo House, the two were held for four hours and questioned by officials led by the Director of Immigration, Mr Albert Musasia, about his presence in Kenya.

The decision to deport him was made after it emerged that Dr Corsi and Mr Bueler had entered the country as tourists, stating they intended to visit game parks.

The book launch was a commercial venture, therefore, they had contravened their immigration status.

After questioning, the two were taken to the office of the Permanent Secretary, Mr Emmanuel Kisombe, and from there through the basement to a car in which they were driven to the house where Dr Corsi had been staying in Runda for verification of his passport and visa before they were escorted to the airport.

There he and his aide were held in the Immigration office to await their flight out of the country.

A US embassy official said they were not told officially about the arrests, saying they had learnt about them from the media.

The official said Dr Corsi’s was a private individual’s visit and did not warrant comment from the embassy since he was not a US government official.

Questioned

Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe commented later that the two US citizens were summoned by the Immigration department to be questioned on the status of their stay in the country.

He also said that they had chosen to fly out of the country voluntarily after being questioned.

Dr Corsi flew into Kenya last Tuesday and was booked to stay at the Laico Regency (formerly Grand Regency) at 7.55am, although hotel communications manager Jenifer Wanza said he had been staying in Runda.

Dr Corsi was expected to stay at the hotel for one month.

General manager Solomon Adede later issued a statement distancing the hotel from the planned news conference, scheduled to take place at the Bogoria room.

He said the management would not allow such a function, and added: ‘Laico Regency is a law-abiding institution and does not condone any smear campaigns.‘

He said the booking for the Press conference had been made by Mr Peter Mbae, editor-in-chief of The Eagle Christian magazine.

NTV Kenya — Obama smear author deported

Mr Mbae founded the newspaper and has played an active role in religious organisations. Posters that were announcing the news conference were quickly pulled down at the hotel.

Kenya features prominently in Dr Corsi’s book, The Obama Nation, which has been seen primarily as a vehicle to run a smear campaign against Mr Obama.

Dr Corsi states early in the book that Kenya will play a key part in his account because ‘Barack Obama himself tells us that Kenya is an important part of who he is, even today.’

But the book has been widely criticised for containing many inaccuracies and distortions.

When it was released, Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said: ‘Jerome Corsi is a discredited liar who is peddling another piece of garbage to continue the Bush-Cheney politics he helped perpetuate four years ago.‘

Similar attacks were published about former presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton during their campaigns to reach the White House.

Perhaps significantly both went on to win the presidency.

Dr Corsi, a well-known right-wing author, used Prime Minister Raila Odinga as a means of attacking Mr Obama on the two fronts of radical Islam and communism.

The Prime Minister, portrayed as a close associate of Mr Obama, is described as ‘a Muslim sympathizer with well-known communist political roots.”

Obama’s father

The book suggests that Mr Odinga might be a Muslim, even though, as it admits, he ‘today professes to be an Anglican.”

The book also attacks Obama’s father Mr Barack Obama Snr, who came from Siaya in Nyanza Province and who died in 1982, referring to him as ‘an alcoholic polygamist‘ and a Muslim who gravitated to the ‘more extreme communist position openly advocated by and identified with Oginga Odinga.‘

The book distorts Mr Obama’s political views and associations — often by means of inaccuracies — in an attempt to destroy his image as a new-style politician able to bridge cultural, racial and ideological divides.

References:

1. Anti-Obama author kicked out of Kenya
2. Drama as anti-Obama author is deported
3. Jerome S. Corsi Spearheads incendiary ‘Bigot Ad’ Campaign in Macomb County, Michigan
4. Debunking Jerome ‘Bigot’ Corsi’s Smear Attack Book: ‘The Obama Nation’

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