A letter by Kamau Moja, a Kenya-Stockholmer, challenging the planned peace mission of Githuku wa Muirani published at KSB (January 16th 2013) elicited mixed reactions from the Kenya-Stockholm community. After what could be a mild exposition of his perceived short-comings of Mr. Muirani within the Kenya-Stockholm community, Kamau proceeded to make a chilling but unsubstantiated claim that the Raila-Uhuru politics unfolding in Kenya as election day draws closer has “created tension” between the Luo and Kikuyu ethnic groups in Stockholm. This is not true.
Historically, the Luo and the Kikuyu ruling classes in Kenya have not been very good friends because of a multiplicity of reasons. Unfortunately, the political differences between these ruling classes have permeated into the very fabric of social relations between the Luo and Kikuyu ethnic groups at the level of the middle class, the working class, the proletariat, students, the peasantry and lumpens alike. Sadly, the superficial differences between the two ethnic groups arising out of the petty and opportunistic political machinations by wealth grabbers in Kenya have infected significant sections of the Kenyan Diaspora.
In Kenya-Stockholm, there is no denying that a tiny conglomeration of ethnic chauvinists from both the Luo and Kikuyu communities do exist. The situation is the same in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Belgium, Finland and other countries where there is a significant presence of Kenyans. However, for anybody to elevate the primitive inter-ethnic hatred resident within a tiny and tribalist section of the Luo and Kikuyu communities into a major trend in Kenya-Stockholm is to amplify naked reality from the point of view of the Luo-Kikuyu relations in Kenya-Stockholm.
As an operative who has been at the centre of gravity in the socio-politico-cultural relations in Kenya-Stockholm, I can report that there is no known tension between Luos and Kikuyus in Stockholm occasioned by political gerrymandering of self-centred and egocentric politicians in Kenya.
Although it is true that there are Luos and Kikuyus who are very selective when it comes to social interactions between the two communities, the fundamental factor that usually determines the mode of attendance of the mentioned functions has continued to be determined by inter-personal relationships, social networks and long-standing political affiliations between members of the two ethnic groups built over long periods of time, not pure ethnic considerations.
By alleging that there is “tension” between Luos and Kikuyus because of political developments in Kenya, Kamau was unconsciously making a serious allegation without producing empirical data to back up his thesis. The big problem is that the issue of Luo-Kikuyu relations is sensitive and the pedestrian nature of Kamau’s treatment of the subject could carry serious consequences if the true reality of the situation is not rendered by informed minds. Nevertheless, it might be consoling to note that Kamau could be forgiven for his spurious assumptions borne out of the need to materialize a credible reason that could enable him get even with Mr. Muirani for undisclosed reasons. Why?
Kamau simply wanted to convey the message that the point of departure of Mr. Muirani’s planned peace mission in Kenya could have been based on him addressing the issue of tribalism in Kenya-Stockholm. My main quarrel with Kamau is that in order to archive his objective, he manufactured the Luo-Kikuyu tension to strengthen his argument that Muirani may have been departing from a major problem in Kenya-Stockholm which, from the point of view of Kamau, deserved more attention compared to an undefined peace mission in Kenya.
The truth is that there is no tension between Luos and Kikuyus in Kenya-Stockholm. What we have are political differences which are unavoidable in any democratic society. Obviously, the Raila-Uhuru political drama in Kenya exhibits strong ethnic pulses, both at home and in Diaspora. However, to transform these pulses into key differences between Luos and Kikuyus in Stockholm and without presenting the key dialectics of the situation is disparaging to say the least.
If Kamau has personal differences with Mr. Muirani and his planned peace mission in Kenya, he ought to articulate his position without manufacturing a fake tension between Luos and Kikuyus in Stockholm. The two communities continue to live in peace and if a Luo does not attend a Kikuyu function or vice versa, Kamau should not exploit the situation to gain mileage in his struggles with Mr. Muirani.
By creating a fictitious scenario in which Luos and Kikuyus in Stockholm were portrayed as having been at loggerheads, and by using this fake scenario to advance his anti-Muirani agenda, Kamau exposed himself as a chief provocateur of ethnic hatred in Kenya-Stockholm. In as much as Kenyans in Stockholm might have their differences with Mr. Muirani and his novel peace mission, it would be misleading for them to buy Kamau’s presentation because the scenario painted by Kamau is imaginary.
It would be wise if Kenyans in Stockholm exploited the Kamau type of rigmarole to cement unity between the different Kenyan ethnic groups in Kenya-Stockholm. In as much as Kamau has a right to his opinion, he should have been more objective, given that he was handling a delicate and sensitive subject that required more objectivity and sensitivity.
If Kamau’s wayward postulation goes unchallenged, he shall have succeeded in driving yet another wedge between Luos and Kikuyus in Kenya-Stockholm. I am a Luo and I have too many Kikuyu friends in Kenya-Stockholm. By challenging Kamau on his unsubstantiated claims, part of the agenda is to convey the message to my Kikuyu friends that tuko pamoja.
Okoth Osewe
About the Author
The cost of Bread in 2002 was Kshs 15.00. It is now Kshs 50.00.
The cost of Unga in 2002 was Kshs 35.00. It is now Kshs 125.00.
The cost of Parafin per litre in 2002 was Kshs 18.00. It is now Kshs 108.00
The cost of Petrol per litre in 2002 was Kshs 46.00. It is now Kshs 125.00.
The cost of Milk in 2002 was Kshs 12.00. It is now Kshs 45.00.
The cost of a 2kg pack of Sugar in 2002 was Kshs 46.00. It is now Kshs 260.00.
And someone has the temerity to tell me that the economy is improving! These are hard facts, and facts never lie.
And Kenyans are excited about these group of people campaigning for leadership! To the extent that we are ready to fight and kill for them! Shame on us….
This is well argued and well written omera. Nani kama wewe?
Raw Facts: Raila’s top aides not Luo!
http://www.kenya-today.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Raila-aides2.pdf
Kenya: A Dream Business Turns Into Nightmare
By Justus Ondari, 11 April 2011
Nairobi — There was no room for contesting or negotiating the Sh20 deal. So with a heavy hear, he signed the dotted line after three days of intense pressure.
With that stroke of a pen, Daniel Kamita Gichuhi signed off his mortgage financing business, which he values at Sh85 million then, for a mere 20 bob.
“It hurt. It still it hurts,” he recalls the 1989 transaction where Home Savings and Mortgage Ltd, a mortgage financier he founded with five other partners, was taken over by government and lumped with eight other “weak” financial institutions into an ICU-like operation that formed what we know today as Consolidated Bank of Kenya.
Almost a quarter a century later, he is still waiting for the Sh20 cheque from Treasury in exchange for a business he jointly owned with Mr Jim Kahiu and four other shareholders – Fair Acres Ltd, Nyaruiru Investment, Qciku Investment Ltd and Karume Investment Ltd, which is associated with former Cabinet minister Njenga Karume.
“I would love to get the Sh20 to keep it as a souvenir,” says Mr Gichuhi, who runs property business, Thrift Homes Ltd.
The tribulations of Mr Gichui and many other investors in the nine banks that were dissolved were touched off by the country’s worst financial crisis between 1984 and 1990, which was characterised by the collapse of banking and financial institutions, mostly those owned and managed by indigenous Kenyans.
It all begun, albeit slowly, with the collapse of the late Andrew Ngumba’s Rural Urban Credit Finance Company due to liquidity problems in December 1984 before being placed under receivership a year later, according to a confidential report on the government’s move, Sunset for the people’s banks.”
The holding group of two institutions – Continental Bank and Continental Credit Finance – whose principal shareholders were Mr Philip Wahome and Mr Maina Wabicho, followed in July 1986 when depositors ran on it and it was “kicked out” of the Nairobi inter-bank clearing house by the Central Bank of Kenya.
Fear gripped the banking sector and suddenly some depositors with savings in indigenous banks started withdrawing their money to avoid losing it.
Shortly, it hit the Union Bank of Kenya, which was associated with businessman Jimnah Mbaru, and its affiliates, Jimba Credit Corporation and Kenya Savings and Mortgages.
“The most devastating impact was caused by the withdrawal of all government deposits from these institutions following a directive by the government that all deposits of public institutions be moved out to the ‘more secure’ state banks,” says the report.
The traumatic experience Mr Gichuhi underwent is clear because he only opened up to an interview after weeks of pestering to speak on the events that peaked on December 7, 1989, with the birth of Consolidated Bank, State-owned and now planning an initial public offering.
“It was the most trying time for me and my family. It is very painful. I would rather not talk about it,” he says. “I lost everything I had worked for since I left university in 1973.”
Among the consolidated firms were Nationwide Finance Company Ltd, owned by J.P Mwangi, who has gone to court over the matter, and the late Alex Kibaki.
Others are Business Finance Co Ltd and Citizens Building Society whose shareholders include veteran insurer, Godfrey Karuri, former Cabinet minister Maina Wanjigi, Andrew Ligale, William Mbote and Joseph Muchemi.
From proud owners of businesses, their lives were transformed into a daily financial struggles. “I had to look for other means of surviving.
So I went into consultancy,” says Mr Marubu Munyaka, a director of Estate Finance Company of Kenya and Estate Building Society of Kenya, which consolidated while he was in the US studying.
“I have had to pay a lot of money, especially to service my mortgage because I didn’t want my family to be thrown out by auctioneers,” says Mr Gichuhi.
Incidentally, to earn a living, he says, he was asked to work for the new owners of his company for two years. The bank disputes the claim, which is a subject of an ongoing court matter.
“They refused pay me for the work I did and my pension,” says Mr Gichuhi who, armed with a Bachelor of Commerce (accounting) degree, was among the first management trainees taken in by Savings & Loan, which Kenya Commercial Bank was restructuring after acquiring it in 1972.
Parastatals such as the National Social Security Fund, National Hospital Insurance Fund, Kenya Re-Insurance Corporation, East African Portland Cement, Cooperative Bank of Kenya, Kenya National Examination Council and Kenya National Assurance Company took up shareholding in Consolidated Bank .
“It was devastating because we had loans and investments that needed the funds they (parastatals) were demanding,” Mr Gichuhi said.
President Daniel arap Moi appointed a special investment committee under Finance (now Internal Security) minister Prof George Saitoti, to advise on how to raise funds to resuscitate the troubled institutions.
Members of the committee included Philip Ndegwa, then CBK governor, Finance Permanent Secretary Harris Mule, Micah Cheserem, chief accountant East African Industries (now Unilever) and later CBK governor as well as BM Gecaga, chairman, British American Tobacco.
Others were Health minister Peter Nyakiamo, his Planning and National Development counterpart, the late Robert Ouko, and Simeon Nyachae, then chief secretary in the Office of the President.
The committee, working with the chief justice, announced it would establish special courts to specifically deal with recovery of the money owed to the troubled banks and financial institutions.
“But it made no visible attempts to rescue the institutions because what followed eventually was their takeover by Consolidated Bank of Kenya,” says the report.
In an earlier interview carried in Smart Company last week, Consolidated Bank CEO David Wachira said owners of the nine institutions were fully paid though efforts to get Treasury’s to confirm this were fruitless.
“The records we have from the owner of the organisation, that is the government, shows that they were fully compensated,” he said, “But they are entitled to pursue any claims they may be having through the court.”
Reliving the events of that fateful end of 1989, the shareholders say they received three letters in two days: One reminding them that they had not complied with the requirement of a maximum of 25 per cent individual shareholding, the second informing them they were still holding public deposits and the third inviting them into a meeting with the committee.
During the meeting they made efforts to secure friendly ways of rescuing their firms – including inviting new shareholders and injecting new capital – but they were rejected.
One of the officers at the meeting put it bluntly. “Why are you taking them round? Give them the true position,” Mr Gichuhi recalls the officer saying.
It dawned on them that they were fighting a losing battle since they were soon given copies of a sale agreement to sign. They were, however, allowed to sign them later after being allowed to consult their other shareholders and lawyers.
The rest, as they say, is history.
“We lost our investments and pride in society,” says Mr Karuri, who has retired from Gateway Insurance, one of the country’s over 40 insurance companies.
Theirs is a story of Kenyans who joined the banking industry in the 1960s and 70s and, by 1980s, had risen through the ranks thereby gaining experience and knowledge that they felt was enough for them to go it alone.
“We felt that a country with only foreign banks and financial institutions will not say it is independent because these institutions are the blood that drives the economy of a country,” says Mr Gichuhi, “We were not only the most qualified, but also best placed to fill in the gap.”
But the shareholders maintain that the government’s action was more than just economic.
“The expropriation was effected on the simple ground that the original owners belonged to a certain ethnic community, which was perceived not only not to support the government of the day, but also financially supported people in opposition and whose businesses were being distressed by government owned and other banks through political pressure from the powers above,” says Mr Munyaka.
But why didn’t they raise issue for this long?
“We could not talk then for fear of being branded economic saboteurs and taken to the Nyayo House torture chambers,” says Mr Karuri.
They say immediately the President Kibaki-led Narc government came to power in 2003, they sort an amicable solution to the issue but so far nothing has come out of their efforts.
Their plea to the government is: to give them a hearing before carrying out the proposed privatisation of Consolidated bank. “We are not against the privatisation,” says Mr Karuri, “All we want is to be involved as shareholders.”
If one considers the so called political spectrum in Kenya, even the blind, deaf and dumb know that Kenyans always vote for their own to a man. Kikuyu’s vote for Kikuyu, Luo’s vote for Luo, Luyha’s vote for Luyha etc etc. What boggles me is they hue and cry over the voting habits of the Kikuyu, why is there such an orchestrated campaign to paint them as evil when they conduct themselves just like every other Kenyan tribe during elections? Why should Mwangi somewhere deep in the Aberdare Mountains vote for Raila or Mudavadi, people he has nothing in common with? Every Mwangi, Omondi and Wafula reason that they share a common ethnic and cultural background with their preferred candidate and hope that their voting for these “leaders” will lead to a better and brighter days. This is the thinking of the majority of Kenyans heading to cast their ballot in March 2013.
When the every growing cadre of opportunistic, tribalistic and bigoted Kenyans behind the façade of politicking that the Luo and the other tribes voted for Kibaki, and the Kikuyu by extension, during the Narc elections of 2002, they are in actual fact disseminating a very convenient lie. Repeating this lie has in some minds made it true, but that does not make it factually so not matter how many times or the number of years it is repeated. The truth of the matter is Raila, Saitoti and Mudavadi had no chance of being elected president running way from Moi’s Kanu with their tails between their legs, but chose to survive politically by joining what was then the opposition. Kibaki, the then leader of the opposition, was the presidential candidate and the ever ambitious Raila had two options; say Kibaki tosha and toe the line or political isolation away from power. The rest as they say is history. If Moi had picked Raila instead of Uhuru, the scenario would have been the same with Uhuru saying Kibaki tosha. The Luo then voted for their man Raila in Narc en masse as did the Kikuyu, Kamba, Luyha etc, each to their own within Narc. The exception was the Kalenjin that were suddenly isolated as a block voting for Moi and Kanu. Raila or his cohorts then think Kenyans are retarded when they claim that it was his turn at the presidency in 2007, but it is obvious that the opportunist streak in every Kenyan politician, found also in Agwambo, figured out that “nusu mkate” in Narc was better than better than “ukame” in Kanu. Considering the numbers, the Kikuyu/ some Kalenjin form one block and the Luo/some Kamba the other. The Luyha block is split between the two. It’s anyone’s guess what the outcome of the coming election will be.
One thing is certain, the Luo will not vote Jubilee and the Kikuyu will not vote CORD for lack of being able to tribally identify with either protagonist. I understand the dynamics of their reasoning, as faulty and destructive as it is, but this does not warrant an all-out cyber war on Kenyans that are not going to be apportioned positions in government to gorge themselves at the expense of the common Kenyan, but just happened to be born Kikuyu or Luo. However it is amusing the see the jostling and shoving that the political class are treating Kenyans to, but pathetic to see the same happening amongst opportunist Kenyans in the lower cadres as they attempt to win recognition from those with political power.
You have posted a good clarification. We do not need engineered tension now towards the coming elections in march 4th.
http://africanpress.me/2013/01/20/sweden-there-is-no-tension-between-luos-and-kikuyus-in-stockholm/
Regards,
Chief editor Korir. African Press International http://www.africanpress.me and African Press International Television http://www.youtube.com/apitv1