There is no doubt that Miguna Miguna’s Canadian-Kenyan citizenship has plunged him into a serious political crisis and opened him to attacks from left, right and center. Given his circumstances, it was fool-hardy for Miguna Miguna to have abandoned his Kenyan citizenship, assumed Canadian citizenship, proceeded to Kenya to illegally acquire a Kenyan Passport and stand for election on the platform of an illegal dual citizenship.
After losing election, it was equally uninspiring for Miguna to have proceeded to assume high political office expecting to get away with the illegal act of acquiring dual citizenship simply because he was serving in the Office of Prime Minister, Hon Raila Odinga. Miguna’s critics are right in questioning his credentials as a defender of the Constitution which he has already violated without recourse.
Miguna’s problems have further been exacerbated by what is perceived by his critics as “sheer arrogance” in his dealings with people and an unwelcome assumption of a “higher moral ground” from where he has supposedly been pontificating and attacking “political opportunists” whom he has allegedly accused of “betraying the struggle”. It is against this background that I wish to respond to Wafula Buke’s onslaught on Miguna Miguna titled “Miguna Miguna, while you were away…” published in the East African Standard (Sunday, January 24, 2010).
The likes of Wafula Buke, former graduates of Nyayo House torture chambers, former detainees, former political prisoners currently inside or outside government, the fraternity of former Kenyan political exiles (at home and in foreign bases) together with numerous unsung heroes/heroines (dead or alive) of the struggle for democracy and human rights in Kenya over the past decades deserve sincere recognition for their invaluable contribution to the struggle in Kenya. There is no way of compensating these patriots for the enormous human sacrifices they made so that Kenya could be where it is today. Regardless of their current stations in life, to undermine their contribution to the struggle is unacceptable and politically suicidal.
Equally prominent in the list are millions of resilient people of Kenya – workers, peasants, students and, most importantly, the youth without whose contribution “in the theatre of war”, the struggle against the one party dictatorship under the authoritarian regime of former President Daniel arap Moi could not have been won. It is the Kenyan youth who took to the streets to pay with their lives for Kenya to become a multi-party state at the height of the Saba Saba uprising.
Back in exile, I cannot count the number of demonstrations we held outside the Kenyan Embassy in Stockholm and Statements we released as part of the contribution for change in Kenya. Throughout the 90s, President Moi could not travel to Sweden because of threats of being followed by Kenyans here to remind him about human rights violations, theft of public funds through corruption, political assassinations, ruling by the mafia, extra-judicial executions and a host of other vices. We organized specific demonstrations to demand for the release of the likes of Koigi wa Wamwere and other political prisoners and the repeal of section 2A of the Kenyan Constitution so that Kenya could become a multi-party State. In our struggles, we viewed ourselves, not just as Kenyan exiles but also as part of the protracted political struggle in Kenya.
Whether or not they are in exile, the contribution of Kenyans abroad to the struggle for a better Kenya cannot be rubbished simply because one Miguna Miguna has found himself on the wrong side of the law. Through his writing, and until his gaffe, Miguna made very significant contributions to the struggle in Kenya. It has to be appreciated that writing is part and parcel of the revolutionary struggle regardless of one’s location.
In as much as it was wrong for Miguna Miguna to have assumed that every Comrade active during the anti-Moi struggle has metamorphosized into an opportunist, one does not have to be in Kenya to make contributions to the struggle otherwise the late Ayatollah Khomeini could not have surfaced from exile in Paris, France to assume power following the historic Iranian revolution in 1979. The African National Congress leadership was, for a long time, based abroad as Mandela and others languished in prison.
Eritrea is the newest State in Africa but during the country’s 30 year secessionist guerilla war, the financial support and political leadership of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front was based abroad with a history of having been founded in Cairo, Egypt. Dalai Lama is leading a struggle for greater autonomy for Tibet from exile. The late PLO leader, Yasar Arafat, led the Palestinian struggle from exile, time when he was also called a terrorist by agents of Western imperialism. The leadership of Hezbollah has operated from exile since its founding in the early 80s.
The Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) still operates from exile despite the capture in Kenya of its leader, Abdullah Ochalan by the Turkish regime assisted by the CIA. Examples in which serious political work has been done from outside the country abound. To assume that the struggle can only be waged when one’s foot is in Kenya is simplistic and ignores both documented experience and changing dynamics of political struggles across the world.
What happened after re-introduction of political pluralism?
Instead of exploiting the unfortunate “Miguna tragedy” to undermine contributions made by Kenyans abroad in the struggle for our country’s emancipation, serious questions need to be asked as to what happened because despite the enormous gains in Kenya’s liberation struggle by way of re-introduction of political pluralism and the defeat of the Moi/KANU dictatorship, millions of Kenyans are facing starvation.
The installation of the Coalition government led by former detainees and political prisoners has not ended corruption, tribalism, mass unemployment, deplorable living standards, stagnant wages in the face of rising inflation, collapsed social infrastructure, land grabbing by the rich, internal exploitation, external dependencies, nepotism, cronyism and other massive failures only identical with the vanquished Moi dictatorship. In his analysis, Miguna’s limitation is that he has not been clarifying why despite the enormous democratic gains in the last two decades, many Kenyans cannot put food on the table, send their children to school or have access to medical services because the public health care system has collapsed.
In the current dispensation, no Party is pointing out that the massive “delivery failure” after Moi’s defeat is intertwined with the failure to defeat capitalism, a system of government in which greed and wealth grabbing by the rich is an acceptable policy. In criticizing former Comrades and consequently drawing their wrath, Miguna’s fundamental oversight appears to have been his inability to point out the wanton ideological lethargy of these Comrades that has seen them retreat into NGO’s, set up ethnic/reformist parties when the country is ripe for revolution and their failure to attack capitalism, a blood-sucking system which needs to be overthrown.
After the Saba Saba uprising, political Parties were set up but they all practiced politics from the point of view of a rotten version of deformed capitalism, just like KANU. What is known about capitalism is that it is a rich man’s system of government that promotes corruption. It is a system designed to produce a few millionaires and millions of poor people. After the much celebrated democratic gains paid for with sweat and blood of thousands of Kenyans, isn’t it time to address the question of a failing political system managed by a minority class of wealth grabbers answerable to nobody but themselves?
Throughout the developed world, politics is about ideological competition but in our country, we remain stuck with ethnic politics, a weakness that has blocked the emergence of class politics at the electoral level and subsequently blocked workers (the producers of wealth) from participating in politics “which has been left to politicians”. Do our liberators lack perspective? Today, Kenya is probably the only country in the world without an Official opposition in Parliament and this condition has been accepted.
Our economy continues to be on the hands of Western multi-national companies and no Party is complaining or pointing out to the masses of the Kenyan people that this is a serious mistake that is hugely responsible for our problems. Almost all our distribution networks, the transport industry, telecommunication industry, key financial institutions (including insurance companies and major Banks), Nairobi Stock Exchange together with leading industries are either foreign controlled or on the hands of local capitalist sharks and their allies.
The country’s wealth is therefore being repatriated abroad with the government acting as a facilitator under a liberalized economic system of government where every profitable public property is on sale under the privatization program. This is why our people are languishing in poverty. Apparently, all established parties are not questioning this defective arrangement. Our politics is controlled by the United States and Britain so we are the leading exporters of flowers in the world presided over by a foreign controlled horticultural industry when our people are starving to death especially in Eastern and North Eastern Provinces because we cannot grow maize.
Despite his current difficult situation brought by his own political myopia, Miguna and others should not apologize for having fled the country to exile. Kenyans involved in Kenyan politics from their bases abroad must also defend their positions because they constitute a “Constituency” that can no longer be ignored in the country’s liberation struggle.
No one owns the struggle, the country has moved on and it needs contributions from everywhere as the struggle continues. Veterans of the struggle should not sit on their laurels or resort to blanket condemnation of contributors from outside the country because despite progress, the country is still under the York of neo-colonialism and imperialist domination. Miguna Miguna has made his mistakes but let us look at the wider picture, stop finger pointing and chest thumping and build a revolutionary Movement or Party that can give direction to millions of struggling Kenyans looking for a way out of the political, social and economic crisis.
Okoth Osewe
About the Author
Amen!O.O that was an excellent critic,it should send a new jolt of political awakening amongst kenyans yearning for TRUE change.Why should we look for or rather expect change to come from the currrent crop of politician…!? I realise now that we have been looking in the wrong places and mandating mojority of the wrong people….we need a clean political slate devoid of most of the current legislatures…O.O,i think its surfice to say that you have earned being one of kenyas prolific PTT in the diaspora by virtue of your experiences and struggles and being political scribe,critic,activist among other creds….aluta continua!!!!
KSB: Thanks. Let’s keep the fire burning.
That was something osewe.The struggle has to continue.Wow! l’m still shaking my head in agreement.
Aluta contunua..as the saying says…Mistake or none the strugle to CHANGE Kenya will continue. Cheap political sideshows will not redeem Kenya from it’s current problems. Miguna, Wafula should remember that been the loudest does not warrant that they are correct..what about the 35+ million Kenyans?
The struggle continues and ALL should chip in.
Wewe Osewe well written….Kenyans even in the know have refused to take the bull by its horns. Every Mkenya is a politician but when asked how to implement change many don’t get it and do not want to sacrifice themselves in the struggle. We diaporians are well versed in issues but we forget that in a divided house none will take us seriously. Recently you proposed (in your new year resolution)that 2010 be a year when we shovel things up. This so called Simama projects led by sons and daughters born with silver spoons should be debated accordingly. Let waKenya bring constructive ideas which can push us forward.
The Weekly Citizen has done it again. Theres a photo of Okoth Osewe in a very negative article about Miguna Miguna. Apparently, somebody at the weekly found your photo on the net and assumed you are Miguna!
KSB: Thanks Godfrey. Just like last time, I have been getting calls the whole day. I think something is wrong at the Editorial dept because I took up the matter with them. They are carrying a correction on Monday and if they don’t, they will have to face automatic legal action. Keep me posted and thanks for your updates. One mistake could be understood but two points to “kuna kitu” pulse.
Yes Osewe,
Your defence of the exiled kenyans’ contribution to the democratisation of Kenya is superb. However I disagree with your line of argument that Capitalism is a system for creating a few millionaires and a horde of poor folks This is a big lie. what economic system is china practising? what about the USA? Capitalism in itself is not evil the evil lies with the people entrusted with running the system and that is where our problem in Kenya is and that is where we should focus our energies.
KSB: Thanks for your comments. We can debate this. Capitalism drives society into development until it reaches a stage of stagnation because of inherent contradictions within the system. China started offf along the lines of Maoism/Stalinism but has now moved to capitalism. The system in USA is puerly imperialistic which bases itself on subjugation of other countries. The fabric of capitalism is exploitation of human and natural resources for individual profit, not in the interest of society. the “people entrustaed with running the system” (the capitalist ruling class) are responsible to nobody but themselves. I do appreciate your perspective and hope that there will be more time in the future to explore the subject.
Otieno Odongo: Watch Michael Moore’s movie -“Capitalism: A Love Story”, to understand the type of capitalism practiced in USA.
This satirical documentary film revolves around the financial crisis of 2007-2010, and in particular, the recovery stimulus which was brought in by the Bush & Obama administrations. Topics covered include Wall Street’s ‘casino mentality’, for-profit prisons, Goldman Sachs’ influence in Washington, DC, the poverty-level wages of many workers, the large wave of home foreclosures, and the consequences of ‘runaway greed’.
http://www.blatantworld.com/comedy/michael_moore_capitalism_a_love_story.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2010/feb/26/michael-moore-capitalism-a-love-story?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
There are four strains of modern capitalism:
1. State-guided capitalism: the government decides which industries get investment, and it often controls the banks and usually emphasizes exports. No country falls exclusively in any one camp, but think of China, much of Southeast Asia and India and, to a degree, Japan. This approach has helped economies propel themselves from also-rans to the first tier. Problems emerge … when these economies catch up and no longer have a clear path ahead. They tend to invest too much in the wrong places, stick too long with yesterday’s winners…
2. Oligarchic capitalism: prevalent in parts of Latin America and the Arab Middle East, power and wealth are held by a few, and economies are organized to make them, not the general populace, richer. This approach has little to recommend it.
3. Big-firm capitalism: in which big private enterprises dominate. Think much of Western Europe, South Korea, with its chaebols (conglomerates), Japan, to a degree, and the U.S. in the era of John Kenneth Galbraith’s 1967 “New Industrial State.”
“At its best, [it] generates sufficiently large cash flows to finance…continuing, incremental improvements in products and services. At its worst, big-firm capitalism can be sclerotic, reluctant to innovate, and resistant to change.”
4. Entrepreneurial capitalism: in which small and innovative firms are significant. Think the U.S., Ireland, Israel, Taiwan and, increasingly, the United Kingdom. Forming a company is easy, socially useful entrepreneurship is rewarded, institutions provide incentives for innovation and growth — a catch-all that encompasses everything from openness to trade to sound bankruptcy laws to effective antitrust regulation.
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/05/good_capitalism.html
Otieno Odongo, here is more about Capitalism:
The Shock Doctrine
In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explores the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world– through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.
Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism – the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock – did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, “shock and awe” warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine
The below link has a talk by Naomi Klein author of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” given September 27, 2007 at Town Hall Seattle.
KSB: Stacy and Mikado: Thanks for doing some research on this topic. Knowledge about capitalism and socialism among Kenyans needs to be increased because ethnicity is driving the country backwards. With the youth liberally drinking ethnic politics served by suspects of crimes against humanity at mammoth hate-speech rallies; and with these suspects being buoyed by their buoyant High Priests, Kenya could be heading to towards an abyss.
Thanks Osewe. Just thought I add a Kenyan perspective so that Otieno Odongo can trace some failures of capitalism as a system.
Check the link: U.S. Imperialism & Poverty in Capitalist Kenya – Watch the outcome of an agreement between the Kenyan government and an American corporation (THE DOMINION COMPANY) messing up Kenyans in their ancestral land, in the name of investing to uplift their lives. Pathetic and merciless indeed!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJL77NbOYns
Here’s Martin Ngatia talking about the failure of capitalism in Kenya:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puUbE7H2RYA
“Capitalism can be the engine by which the poor, set free in an open marketplace, can raise themselves from poverty. We must give them the tools. We ignore them at our peril.” (Hernando de Soto):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW5FKNpgg6I&feature=player_embedded
Capitalism has failed to solve the problems of the people of Kenya, just as it has failed on a world scale to deliver the kind of life that most people want. Lenin pointed out that the national question is ultimately a problem of bread. The central problem was, and is still, economic: Kenya’s economic growth did not keep up with the rapid growth of population, which is one of the fastest in Africa. The result was a chronic shortage of jobs especially among the youth. The shortage of good agricultural land and rural unemployment has had a serious effect.
Unable to make a living on the land, large numbers of unemployed youths migrated to the towns where they rotted in the slums of Nairobi and other urban centres. If the economy were capable of providing jobs and houses for everyone, the antagonism, suspicion and jealousy between people from different communities would lose its reason to exist.
If a revolutionary party existed, it could give an organized and conscious expression to the discontent of the masses. But in the absence of a revolutionary alternative, other forces can come to the fore, the dark forces of tribalism that have their roots in a distant past and have not been overcome.
It is that greed for profit that is ultimately responsible for the misery of millions of people in Africa and all over the world. It is the rapacious greed of the landlords, bankers and capitalists, both the well-heeled bourgeois of London and New York and their local office boys of the Kibaki type, who have robbed Africa of its treasure and reduced its people to slavery.
What we see in Kenya is barbaric, but the barbarism is the result of the failure of capitalism: failure to give work to millions of unemployed youths, who are condemned to rot in the slums of Nairobi; failure to feed and clothe the people, to provide them with decent houses, schools and hospitals: in one word, failure to provide them with even the most basic conditions of a civilized existence. You deny people a civilized life and then complain of barbarism! But capitalism ultimately means barbarism and what we see on the streets of Narobi today can be repeated even in the most civilized nations on earth, if this degenerate system is allowed to continue much longer.
http://www.marxist.com/barbaric-consequences-capitalism.htm