On Thursday, 12th February, 2009 at 9.00 am, Justice Nyamu of Nairobi’s High Court, once again sat to listen to the landmark citizen instituted case against the Parliamentary Service Commission (PSC) in which 17 representative Kenyans are seeking orders that the PSC be declared unconstitutional along with the law that created it and further that the High Court order the recovery of all the money estimated at KES 7 billion and other resources the PSC has squandered on Parliamentarians since 2003.

cc. Developed as a participatory platform in sharp contrast to the general absence of space for political representation in the Kenyan nation, this article traces the history of the Bunge La Mwananchi (Parliament of the People) social movement through its members’ own voice. Set against the backdrop of the intolerant Moi government, Bunge offered a viable alternative to the corruption-riddled and ethno-factional nature of official party politics, and has continued to challenge the excesses of the country’s political class. With a view to further advancing the success of the movement, Bunge calls upon fellow Kenyans to open new chapters around the country and make their voices heard.

cc. Speaking at the Kenya We Want Conference (4–6 February 2009), Yash Ghai elegantly outlines his views on the historical limitations of Kenya’s constitution and the holistic service it should provide in shaping lives rooted in opportunities, representation, freedom of expression and ‘nation building’. While keen to see the development of a constitution true to these goals, Ghai highlights the inherent complexity of creating such a national document, and concludes that a constitution’s successful implementation ultimately hinges upon a country’s ability to foster popular, representative participation and a culture of genuine respect for the law.

Reporters Without Borders is shocked by the murder of Francis Kainda Nyaruri, a freelance journalist based in the southwestern town of Nyamira, whose decapitated body was found on 29 January in a nearby forest. He had been missing since 16 January. “We would like above all to express our deep sympathy to the victim’s family,” Reporters Without Borders said. “We urge the competent authorities, especially Nyanza province police chief Larry Kieng, to do everything possible to establish the motive for this appalling murder and to bring those responsible to justice, keeping in mind its shocking symbolism for the Kenyan population.”

The new Kenyan National HIV/AIDS Strategic Plan should address rights abuses that make children vulnerable to HIV infection and impede access to care, Human Rights Watch has said in a policy proposal submitted to the government. The organization pointed out that tens of thousands of children in Kenya who need anti-retroviral treatment (ART) are not receiving it. The Kenyan National Aids Control Council (NACC) is currently preparing its new five-year strategic plan.

Kenya's top legal officer has denied that the government has been blocking a probe by the United Kingdom into the Anglo Leasing affair. On Thursday, the UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) halted a probe into the corruption case, saying Kenya was not cooperating with the investigation.

The Kenya Government failed to cooperate with the British in investigations of the Anglo Leasing scandal leading to the termination of the probe. The Serious Fraud Office on Wednesday suspended the probe due to a lack of evidence. British High Commissioner to Kenya Rob Macaire described the termination of the investigations as a sad day and called on the government to act on all senior officials named in graft.

cc. A year after the signing of Kenya’s National Accord, Tom Kagwe of the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) reviews the successes and limitations of the formation of the coalition government. Highlighting the fragmented progress towards truth and justice, Kagwe argues that while the issue of post-election internally displaced persons remains a troublesome reality for the country, the CIPEV report represented a celebrated step towards ending political impunity.

Where do you hope to join my life
Flowing
Not like a river
But as torrents and currents of the tide
Buffeted by multitudinous waters of change
Going back or forth?
Lapping up the high and low banks
Dazzling the plains with illuminous floodings
Awash against the orange red sky of our history?
Where?
Do you and I
Merge as minor or major (con)tributeries
To the great sea -
Vast ocean of change?
Or where do we become engulfed by (o)the)r tides of the past
Of victory and of shame
And of what futures unforetold, then and now?
What do we become?
Droplets of vapour
Carried under the translucent sky
To descend on unsuspecting blossom of spring-tide freedom
As a dew drop - inseparably defiant;
Or swallowed by the parched earth of our desert(er)s
Or a hail stone in the tropical storm?
Here we stand poised to (e)merge
Like Gikuyu and Mumbi
In a world of numerous possibilities
Drawing from history
And awed by the great expanses of the earth, the sea and the sky
That our our future
And which hold promises of infinite, infinite...
Possibilities
London 1997

Priscilla Bosibori, now 17, was 14 when an aunt fetched her from her school in Kisii, western Kenya, on the pretext of taking her to an important family function. Once they had left the school grounds, her aunt said her family had found a way of protecting her from HIV. Bosibori arrived home to a welcome of songs and dances by female members of her family before being placed in a room with other girls her age.

Pro-gay priest, Reverend John Makokha may face the axe from the United Methodist Church (UMC) following his positive stance on homosexuality, which is said to contravene the social principles of the UMC. Makokha confirmed this explaining that he is likely to be released from his duties during the next annual conference in April 2009 in Kampala.

Caritas is launching a US$4.1 million appeal to help the people of Kenya after warnings that children have already started to die from hunger-related illnesses. Up to 10 million people could be hit by acute food shortages. A combination of drought, crop failures, high food prices and last year's post election violence means shortages are widespread. The crisis is affecting not only vulnerable groups such as women, children and pastoralists, but also households previously thought to have reliable food sources.

When asked by a reporter why he robbed banks, a famous American bank robber Willie Sutton is alleged to have replied: "Because that is where the money is." Over to Kenyan leaders, why are you corrupt? I guess the answer is: "Because public wealth/property belongs to no one in particular!"

cc. 2008 began for Kenyans with the murder of Kenya’s democracy. It ended with the son of a Kenyan migrant winning the US presidential race. In editing this special issue of Pambazuka News, ‘Kenya – one year on’, our guest editor, Shailja Patel says the the questions that arise apply to both these historic events.

How do we create genuine political, social and economic transformation, rather than just settling for symbolic change?

How do we bring critical thinking and evidence-based analysis to hope and vision?

How do we address the truth of mass crimes against entire populations, while remaining open to visionary possibility?

Three pervasive myths still circulate about the Kenya Crisis.

First, that it is over. In May 2008, the host of NTV’s breakfast show asked me, ‘Shouldn’t we just get over it and move on?’ On 27 December, the one-year anniversary of the stolen election, the presenter of the BBC’s The World Today programme struggled with irritation when I kept harking back to the civil coup. ‘Hasn’t the country moved on?’, he demanded pointedly.

The answers lie in Ndung’u Wainaina’s exposure of the fundamental flaws of the of displaced Kenyan women and girls. We cannot move on because the post-election violence simply ripped the lid off deep historical chasms and inequities that have never been truly laid out for resolution.

The second myth is the idea that ‘It is impossible to know who really won the 2007 election.’ Therefore, revert to myth one – get over it and move on. I am frequently challenged on my use of the term ‘civil coup’. Anyone who accepts the deeply compromised Kriegler Report at face value must read the articles to understand how Kenyans have still not received the truth they deserve about the election.

The third myth has practically spawned its own genre: the stories of ‘what saved Kenya’. My favourite among these so far was recounted to me, in all earnestness, by a Ugandan lawyer: ‘It was Museveni who told Raila and Kibaki: Guys, you need to sort this out. Remember how he arrived in Kenya with that briefcase under his arm? The mediation agreement was inside.’

The lessons of how Kenya was pulled back from the brink of anarchy are vital for the rest of the continent. They highlight the unsung importance of skilled civil society professionals doing their jobs and doing them excellently. Of communities standing up for their rights, against poverty and marginalisation. Of pan-African progressive networks. Of building movements and alliances. Building institutions, infrastructure, and coalitions. So that in the moment when somebody needs to speak, the channels exist, and open, for them to be heard.

On 3 January 2008, as bloodshed escalated across Kenya, all three daily newspapers agreed to run the same banner headline: ‘Save our beloved country’. In the year since, Kenyans have moved from that supplicant pose to one of palpable, vocal outrage at the repeated betrayals of the political class. It is an outrage that has taken to the streets and will not be silenced.

Where do we seek visionary possibility in this moment, when it seems that the ruling class will sell the very soil from under our feet? I find it in the heroes of Kenya’s peoples’ movement. In Shailja Patel is an award-winning Kenyan poet, writer, and political activist.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

cc. In March 2008, I was asked to deliver a “Kenya Bulletin” at South Africa’s Time Of The Writer Festival. In that bulletin, I identified the seven factors that were key to pulling Kenya back from the brink of civil war.

1) The progressive stand taken by the African Union at its January 2008 summit, bolstered by the intervention of the AU chair, President Kikwete of Tanzania.

2) Senegal’s advocacy to put the Kenya Crisis on the agenda for the AU summit.

3) The European Union’s willingness to take its lead from the AU, and offer consistent, concerted support to Kenyan civil society.

4) The deep patience and extraordinary skill of Kofi Annan and the Panel of Eminent Persons, in the face of the intransigence and belligerence of the Kibaki / PNU camp at the negotiation table. A belligerence that shamed all Kenyans, particularly when it reached the paranoid extreme of bugging Annan’s hotel room.

5) The mobilization by the Kenyan Left of progressive Pan-African networks built over decades of organizing.

6) The strength of Kenyan civil society, both domestic and diaspora.

7) The unanimous resolutions passed by the US Senate and Congress, calling for, among other things, sanctions on PNU and ODM leaders, such as travel bans and freezing of assets.

I put it on the record that no one on the Kenyan Left will ever forgive Kibaki and the PNU for placing us in the skin-crawling position of having to petition the Bush regime to intervene in Kenya. And then, having to be grateful for that intervention.

Or for making Kenya the new global hotspot for crisis entrepreneurs - flocks of UN careerists looking to make their CVs off the Kenya Crisis.

I skewered the despicable maneuvering of Uganda’s President Museveni to manipulate the crisis for his own East-African-Empire-Building agenda.

Finally, I broached the most painful topic of all: the complicit silence and blatant partisanship of a generation of former giants of radical struggle in Kenya – most notably, writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Nobel Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai – on the murder of Kenya’s democracy. This silence grew to deafening proportions as Kibaki’s coup was followed by the suspension of civil liberties and waves of extra-judicial killings of Kenyan civilians. It was a silence which colluded with the ethno-fascist elements of the Kenyan Diaspora. A silence that became heartbreaking when this faction launched death threats against the new generation of human rights defenders, deeming them “Gikuyu traitors” for taking a public stand against the state-sponsored violence. A silence unbroken to this day.

Stories of movements do not make good film scripts, or even good headlines. We are conditioned to seek individual heroes, visionary leaders, personalities. That is why this story has not yet been told – how the Kenyan Left saved our country.

It is a necessary tale. A picture of a net, and how it works. A narrative that must be recorded. Because we on the Left need to remember our victories when the odds seem insurmountable. Because the chattering classes of Kenya still ask, in all seriousness, “Is there a Kenyan Left?” Because the ignorant still assert blithely that “civil society did nothing while Kenya burned”.

Read on………

* * * * *

On the morning of December 31st, following Mwai Kibaki's civil coup in Kenya, 23 members of Kenyan civil society convened an emergency meeting in Nairobi. All longtime activists, they represented a spectrum of legal, human rights, and governance organizations, as well as individual Kenyans.

Within hours, they had released a statement which:

denounced the credibility of the electoral process, demanded the ban on live media coverage be lifted, urged full disclosure of presidential tally results, offered hotlines for electoral commission whistleblowers, and appealed to the international community not to recognize Kibaki as president.

This group would become Kenyans for Peace, Truth and Justice (KPTJ), the voice of Kenya's "people power" that would pull the country back from the brink of civil war.

Kenyan bloggers across the world swung into action to fill the gap left by the ban on live media. A few days later, the pan-African social justice network, Fahamu, set up an Action Alerts page for Kenya, a comprehensive, real-time, globally-accessible information and resource base for activists and civil society. Fahamu is now playing a similar role in the Zimbabwe crisis.

During the intense the 48 hours after that first meeting, KPTJ created three working groups – legal, violence-monitoring, and direct action. In subsequent weeks, the legal and violence groups would generate information, backed by verified data and professional analysis, to underpin reasoned positions and messaging for diplomatic efforts. The direct action team would meet daily, defying the government ban on public assembly, providing a public forum for Kenyans across all sectors and ethnicities to channel their outrage into activism.

As an activist and scholar of movement-building, I had the tremendous opportunity to observe from within what made KPTJ so effective. From the start, there was a remarkable lack of ego, an absence of personal ambition, both among the experts who made up the steering group, and in the larger community support base. The KPTJ alchemy was built on:

Chemistry between the members. Not the adrenalin-fuelled instant combustion of response to a crisis, but a professional compatibility tried and tested in the field Experience. All the leaders had been in the movement since the early 90s. Trust. KPTJ leaders had built respect for each others’ skills and capabilities over years of working together. Responsibility and ownership. People stepped up to the demands of the hour with heroic commitment.

From the outset, KPTJ insisted that any resolution of the crisis must address the injustices at all levels - historic, and current -, which precipitated the catastrophe. Prior to the elections, many of its 40-plus member organizations were already ferocious advocates for justice and equity for all Kenyans. KPTJ categorically rejected calls for "peace" and "dialogue" from the camp sardonically labeled “Kenyans For Calm” - those who really sought violent suppression of the poorest and most disenfranchised Kenyans, so that "normal life" could resume for the wealthy.

KPTJ offered an analysis of the post-election violence that traced each strand of violence to its source, and held the initiators of each form of violence accountable. When we said "peace", we meant that the excessive use of police violence, and "shoot to kill" orders, had to stop. We challenged the uneven and selective policing that allowed Nairobi slums and marginalized areas of the country to burn, while police ringed an empty Uhuru Park to prevent peaceful assembly and protest. We named the militia mobilized in Central, Rift Valley and Nyanza provinces, by individual political actors, to evict, loot, rape and terrorize poor Kenyans, and we described their operations.

Meanwhile, across the world, the Kenyan diaspora community was rising. In Minnesota, home to over 100,000 migrants from the East Africa region, it was not just Kenyans, but Somalis, Ethiopians, Sudanese, Ugandans, who lobbied their elected representatives. All had a vital stake in the political stability of Kenya, economic gateway and entry port for the East and Central African region, and the Horn of Africa.

The initial response of the US to Kibaki’s civil coup was a formal message of congratulations on his “presidential victory”. US ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, followed this by urging Kenyans to “accept the results of the election.” The congratulations were hastily rescinded when the European Union issued a strongly-worded statement that the “tally results lacked credibility” and called for a new election.

Diaspora Kenyan organizers, Dr. Siyad Abdullahi and Dr. Sam Oyugi, made formal advocacy visits to Washington DC to lobby the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They found that the State Department’s support of Kibaki was rooted in a simplistic and factually flawed formula:

Kibaki = Christian, Pro-Markets, Pro-US, Pro-War-On-Terror Odinga = Pro-Islam (may even be Muslim!), Socialist, Anti-US

While calling for Senate hearings on the Kenya crisis, they worked to dispel the myths. They also got Minnesota’s Senator, Norm Coleman, to sponsor the Kenya Resolution in the US Senate. Drawing directly on KPTJ’s language and analysis, the Kenya Resolution called for:

1) all politicians and political parties to desist from reactivation, support and use of militia organizations

2) leaders of both parties to engage in internationally-brokered mediation and dialogue

3) a "thorough and credible independent audit of the election results" with the possibility of a recount, retallying, or re-run of the presidential election within a specified time period

4) Kenyan security forces to refrain from excessive force and respect the human rights of Kenyans

5) those found guilty of human rights violations to be held accountable

6) an immediate end to the restrictions on media and rights of peaceful assembly and association

7) an end to threats to civil society leaders and human rights activists

8) all political actors in Kenya to be responsible for the safety of civil society leaders and human rights activists

9) the international community, UN Aid organizations, and neighboring countries to assist Kenyan refugees

10) the President of the United States to:

- support diplomatic efforts towards dialogue between ODM and PNU leaders

- impose an asset ban and travel freeze on PNU and ODM leaders

- restrict all non-essential aid to Kenya until a peaceful resolution was reached.

The Kibaki camp had not counted on the strength and speed with which civil society would mobilize. Nor had it accounted for the intellectual leadership and social capital ordinary Kenyans would unleash, domestically, and internationally. This, as much as Kenya's strategic and regional importance, triggered the African Union's intervention in Kenya.

When a KPTJ team of six met the Forum of Retired African Presidents in Nairobi, Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda noted that this was the first group the Forum had met that was young, ethnically balanced, and gender-balanced (three women and three men). "This gives me hope!" he declared enthusiastically.

Behind the scenes of KPTJ was civil society powerhouse, the Soros-funded Open Society Institute for East Africa. Led by Binaifer Nowrojee and Mugambi Kiai, both human rights activists for decades, OSIEA from the outset took a position as "Kenyan, rather than NGO". Drawing on its global network of OSI foundations, OSIEA facilitated and funded international advocacy efforts for KPTJ in key policy-making centres – London, Brussels (headquarters of the European Union), New York (headquarters of the UN), Washington DC, and Addis Ababa (headquarters of the African Union).

On January 16th, 2008, KPTJ's Gladwell Otieno (Executive Director of the Africa Centre for Open Governance) spoke at the Royal Africa Society in London, and to the Afric All-Party Parliamentary Group of the British government. The following day, the Chair of the Africa APPG drew on her statement of KPTJ's position in his recommendations to the UK Parliament.

In Brussels, Otieno found that EU members were nervous of "coming across as colonial masters". KPTJ's analysis spurred the EU to offer more robust support to the AU for intervention.

The turning point for Kenya came at the AU summit in Addis at the end of January 2008. Kenya was not an agenda item for the summit. But by this time, KPTJ had drawn on decades of progressive Pan-African organizing to mobilize civil society allies across the continent. While OSIEA was unable to get KPTJ accredited to attend and speak at the AU summit, it lined up a plethora of meetings with embassies and policymakers. Senegal was particularly supportive in putting the Kenya Crisis on the agenda. When the Kibaki delegation arrived at the AU, they found the heat on them in a way they had not anticipated.

Across the Atlantic, KPTJ built momentum in its mission to shift the US position towards a mediated resolution to the conflict. Critical to their success was the groundwork already laid by the US Kenyan diaspora. The Kenya resolution had been universally passed by Senate, and was before Congress, when KPTJ's representatives arrived in DC for meetings on Capitol Hill.

This, coupled with the effective presentation of the civil society position by Maina Kiai (chair of National Commission for Human Rights) and Muthoni Wanyeki (Executive Director of Kenya Human Rights Commission), prompted a shift in the previously unhelpful unilateral approach of the US State department. As violence escalated in Kenya, Maina Kiai returned to address the House of Representatives on February 7th. He called for higher-level intervention from the US.

On February 14th, President Bush announced the dispatch of Condoleeza Rice to Kenya. On arrival in Kenya, Rice requested a meeting with representatives of Kenyan Civil Society. The team of six sent to meet her included Gladwell Otieno (KPTJ), Njeri Kabeberi (KPTJ / National Civil Society Congress) and Betty Maina (Kenya Association of Manufacturers / KPTJ). It was clear that Rice was impressed by the majority and impact of strong women leaders in the delegation. Immediately following this meeting, Rice spoke to the press, finally aligning the US with the AU and EU, in requiring Kibaki and his hardliners to negotiate a power-sharing agreement.

"The Diaspora effort provided the external fire," say's OSIEA's Mugambi Kiai. "KPTJ was the internal energy. Together, they brought the water to the boil."

* Shailja Patel founded KPTJ’s Direct Action Training Workshops, to empower grassroots activists with tools and skills for political engagement. The programme was one of seven projects, selected from a global pool, to receive a Ned Grant 2008–09 from New Tactics In Human Rights.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

cc. While all of Kenyan officialdom in political and civil society alike decries the endurance of tribalism, there remains a pervasive unwillingness to address the consequences of a phenomenon still prevalent across the country and with powerful implications for democracy, representation and stability, writes Mugambi Kiai. Though understood at a rudimentary level, the theme of ethnicity, argues Kiai, persists at the heart of the architecture of power in Kenya, the negative effects of which will only begin to be tackled through decisive action to consolidate widespread faith in Kenyan identity and citizenship.

The Corporate Council on Africa (CCA), The Embassy of the Republic of Kenya, African Diplomatic Corps, African Union, and African Professionals in Washington, D.C., will donate $35,000 to the Barack Obama Secondary School in Kogelo, Kenya, CCA has announced. The donation, to be given in February through the United States Embassy in Nairobi, will be used to purchase books, supplies, and other needed enhancements. Event partners agreed at the offset of the event’s planning process that the Senator Barack Obama Secondary School would be the most appropriate beneficiary of event proceeds.

Last November, North Eastern Province was hit by floods that cut off the region. Two months later, the green scenery has turned tinder dry. Surface temperatures oscillate between 35 and 40 degrees, says the Kenya Meteorological Department. Residents tread on a thin line between life and death as the food shortage bites. Water sources — pans, dams, and boreholes — have turned into murky poodles. Also facing food shortage are neighbouring districts of Tana River and Kyuso. Fafi and Lagdera, that were carved out of Garissa last year, are also in a bad state.

We lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex individuals, in a word, queers, have had the distinct un-pleasure of being told we don't exist—in official government statements, historical documents, and contemporary statements. Well, we do.

Makueni District Hospital in eastern Kenya has recorded a significant drop in the weight of several of its HIV-positive patients in the past three months, which nutritionists ascribe to severe food shortages across much of the country. "We have a large number of patients with a BMI [body mass index, a measure of nutritional status] below the healthy cut-off of 18.5," Fransiscah Yula, a nutritionist at the hospital, told IRIN/PlusNews.