Will New Young Turks Avoid Fate of Predecessors?

As Raila Odinga rides into the sunset years of his political career, there is little doubt that he turned out to be the first among equals of the so called “young Turks” of the 1990s. Mainly from the FORD movement but with peers elsewhere, the group included among others Paul Muite, James Orengo, Anyang’ Nyong’o, Mukhisa Kituyi, Kiraitu Murungi, Farah Maalim, Martha Karua, Gitobu Imanyara, Koigi Wamwere, Kijana Wamalwa, George Anyona and Katama Mkangi.

Spawned of the second liberation movement, this youngish group of ambitious political activists threatened to upset the status quo, capture power and introduce radical reforms in our political landscape. They would eventually fail to decisively capture power by never winning the presidency. The adoption of a new constitution in 2010 is perhaps the greatest achievement of this cohort although they are no longer the drivers of its implementation.

Two major factors contributed to their failure to ascend to the presidency. First, an internecine war to become the de facto leader of the group and eventually president proved costly. Characterized by feelings of betrayal, jealousy and resentment, it led to splits, defections and creation of a plethora of weak smaller parties from which each one hoped to win. When they realized this would not work, they opted to join hands in coalitions devoid of ideology other than “power by all means”. This was the case with the NDP-KANU merger and later the birth of NARC.

Joining forces with KANU and therefore elements of the status quo was the second main undoing of the group. Since NARC took power in 2002, it has been impossible to distinguish a major party that can purely boast a reform agenda given the history of key members. No doubt, these representatives of the status quo have been instrumental in fundraising for campaign war chests hence the inability for the main parties to dispense with them. In the process, they have managed to keep the young Turks of the 1990s away from the presidency with the one who came closest being Raila Odinga. Besides, they have successfully managed to engage young Turks from the 90s in their tainted ways to the extent that the high esteem with which Kenyans once viewed them all but dwindled.   

First forward to 2014 and we have the Jubilee coalition that takes pride in its mantra of a digital generation leadership under President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto. Having played critical roles in the Kenyan politics from their KANU days, it would however be difficult to view the duo as successors to the 1990s young Turks. Rather, the heirs of that cohort are newer faces in both Jubilee and CORD coalitions. The likes of Kipchumba Murkomen, Kindiki Kithure, Hassan Joho, Hassan Omar, Ababu Namwamba, Alfred Mutua, Kenneth Okoth, Agostino Neto, Johnson Sakaja, Naisula Lesuuda, Priscilla Nyokabi, Mary Emaase, and Rachael Shebesh are the new kids on the block.

Have they learned from the mistakes of their predecessors as they navigate the rough an unforgiving sea that is Kenyan politics? 

Paper Tiger Political Parties Stifling Deepening of Democracy in Kenya

Elections 2013 are gone. The fanfare of activities in and around the headquarters of the main political parties is no more. Months to the general elections, new parties are created and old ones emerge from hibernation to contest for various offices. The peak of activity is marked by acrimonious nominations in the parties of the season as the less significant ones wait to accommodate disgruntled losers. Election day comes, winners are declared and another flurry at headquarters occur for the scramble for nominated positions. Then, bar the occasional bye election, all is relatively quiet with mainly elected representatives as voices of virtually comatose parties for the next four years. Welcome to the life cycle of Kenyan political parties.

The reality is that our political parties are paper tigers. They lack coherent ideology, vision or purpose. Their membership is largely transient with loyalties tied to individuals rather than the party.  Hence personality cults support the existence of the party and the whims of individuals make or break the organization. A lack of committed membership also means that the parties are generally starved of funding and few individuals (“the owners”) contribute funds to run party activities. In turn, the owners feel they have a right to call the shots in the party. In fact this is the major genesis for favoritism and flawed processes during party nominations as the owners believe they have earned the right to subvert a one man one vote process.

The last true mass party in Kenya was KANU. It had a vibrant membership, formal structure, and active branch offices. However, for much of its history, it flourished as a beneficiary of a single party dictatorship with a large share of its members coerced into its activities. Unfortunately, none of the political parties that have emerged since the return of multi-party democracy have been able to craft a functional organization. Worse, while demanding democratic practice and transparency by the government, these parties have all been unable to successfully hold holistic democratic and transparent elections. Attempts to do this have been the death knell of the great parties of the last two decades – FORD, NARC and ODM. Only KANU under Uhuru Kenyatta attempted to carry out comprehensive grassroots to national elections, predictably followed by a major fall-out.  All these organizations turned out to be but paper tigers that survived on personality cults.   

Since the last general election, none of the owners of the three major parties - TNA, ODM and URP – have shown an appetite for reorganization and elections within their parties. Meetings are held, and declarations are made of near-future party elections. But will the paralysis brought about by fear of fall-outs be overcome this time? Are party owners willing to relinquish dictatorial control over parties? Are party enthusiasts willing to take a more active role in party affairs including financial contributions? This would allow them to make a grounded claim to ownership and therefore decision making within the party.

Personality cults alone cannot sustain a party that is making a claim to national leadership. Further, we should not expect to deepen our democratic culture if we cannot develop viable parties as strong institutions that can survive the test of time. There are mutterings about ODM holding elections in February 2014 and we wait with bated breath. Time will tell if we have learned any lessons from our recent history. 

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2013 Brown University Graduate School Commencement

A Tribute To Author Barbara Kimenye

This post was originally published in The Star http://www.the-star.co.ke/opinions/others/95403-a-tribute-to-author-barbara-kimenye

Before there was JK Rowling and Harry Potter, there was Barbara Kimenye and Moses. Yes, the Moses series authored by Kimenye had a cult following amongst urban children like me, who grew up in Kenya in the 1980s. Her writings were a breath of fresh air that opened my eyes to African literature and African writers.

Prior to coming across her Moses series in standard four, most of what I read was about Western culture and authored by Westerners. I started off with the Ladybird series from basic titles that taught one to read, then graduated to titles like Little Red Riding Hood and The Gingerbread Man. Next in line were Enid Blyton’s The Secret Seven and The Famous Five series.

Yet something was missing! These characters lived in a world alien to me. The closest I had been to their world was through our Sanyo black and white television. All that changed with Moses. For the first time I was reading fiction yet the characters were just like me and my neighbours.

They played familiar games, pulled familiar pranks and had teachers like our very own who would make us pay dearly for our misdemeanours. Later as I moved on to a boarding high school, I was struck by how accurate her depictions of life in an all-boys boarding school in Africa were.

While I did not ditch the ‘foreign’ works, it was the beginning of embracing African literature, an alternative that hitherto did not exist. I discovered and devoured the African Writers Series. I got intimate with the excellent work of African authors like Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Okot p’Bitek, Alex la Guma and many more. I realised that Africans were intelligent enough to pen great narratives. What’s more, Africans had their own interesting tales far removed from the Western tales we had been made to believe to be the only worth reading.

It was therefore with great sadness that I learned of Kimenye’s passing via Facebook, a month after the fact. The post directed me to a link ( http://gu.com/p/3afq2) in The Guardian, a UK publication, which had a befitting obituary to her. It is said that you learn something new every day. Today I learned that Barbara Kimenye was the scion of a West Indies father and British mother and not the Ugandan I always assumed her to be. That she came to Africa as an adult and was so adept at vividly portraying the lives of African youth without having lived it is a mark of her genius. Barbara, I thank you for the wonderful stories you brought to our lives and the doors you opened to our African imagination.