Kenya. Where is your future?

Lake Turkana’s clear waters emerge like a glassy screen, breaking through the rugged rocks and dry earth that precede its approach.But Lake Turkana, slightly salty and alkaline and abounding in 40 fish species, faces a severe threat from across the border in Ethiopia. The row with Uganda over the tiny Migingo Island in Lake Victoria is nothing compared to the environmental catastrophe staring at Lake Turkana.

By the way forget Migingo Island(which is only 14km away from kenya and over 240km away from Uganda), the ugandan flag is there already..mta-du. Forget the constant threats from our Somalia underdogs…oops not underdogs anymore, since we are unable to counter them.We dont have a governemt that cares for its citizens at all, but what the big fish will take home from the loot.

Back to our Lake Turkana,Ethiopia is midway through construction of a dam upstream on River Omo, which is Lake Turkana’s main tributary, giving it 80 per cent of its water. The other rivers, Turkwel and Kerio are seasonal and can barely sustain the lake’s water level.

The giant project poses a greater danger to 300,000 people around the lake in Turkana Central and Turkana North.

Its aquatic life, including the Nile perch, which they largely depend on for food and cash, could die out as salinity increases with the lowering of water level.

Similarly, a lake-dependent forest, one of the last pristine dry land forests in Africa, would also be in grave danger.

The tragedy looks real as the Gilgel Gibe III hydroelectric dam project(Ethiopian) is being built with the knowledge of the Kenya Government, which hopes to benefit from surplus power projected to be generated.

Too sad.

What of the Mau forest issue?

Kenyans today stand to lose half the land in their country: All that region to the west of the Rift Valley is going to suffer a disaster of big proportions; it’s drying up, the farms are producing less, rainfall is decreasing, it’s becoming hotter, the lakes are vanishing.

In the fullness of time, it will be a wasteland like the North, poor and able to support only a handful of people and animals. It is a disaster we are inflicting on ourselves.

Kenya has five sources of water: The Cherangany range, the Aberdares, Mt Elgon, Mt Kenya, and the biggest of all, the Mau Escarpment and its various forests.

Lake Nakuru(that is now drying), especially, may become history in a decade or less, while Lake Victoria is also under great threat.

The sad fact is that all these tragic consequences will have been caused by the greed of a few – individuals so myopic that they could never see their pursuit of quick wealth could mean the death of millions. These are the same people who are now threatening to unleash violence should ‘‘their people’’ be evicted.

The gate collections from the Mara and the Lake Nakuru National Park are more than a billion shillings a year. The total direct and indirect revenue from those two parks is more than Sh5 billion a year.

These forests are the life support system of half of the country and beyond. Tea grown in Kericho and the Nandi Hills, worth an estimated Sh8 billion a year, is nurtured by the moisture and ambient temperatures provided by these forests. Five million people in the Lake Victoria basin owe their livelihood to those same forests.

Kenyan is sold!Did you spot the story below…..

……….The agreement signed between the Kenya Airports Authority and Qatari investors to build a five-star hotel and five office blocks at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport grants liberal privileges to the investors but little in terms of benefits and earnings to Kenya.

According to the fine print of a confidential Cabinet paper seen by the Sunday Nation, the KAA will only be entitled, during the first five years of the operations of the hotel, to a concession fee of five per cent calculated on the gross turnover of the business. The fee increases to 10 per cent after five years and must be renegotiated in the 15th year.

The only other fee KAA is entitled to under the agreement is $1,000 a year, which will be paid by the companies renting space in both the five-tower office complex and the multiple exhibition centres — and a Sh10 million annual rent.

In exchange for this, the agreement grants the investors from the wealthy Gulf state a massive 90 acres of land strategically located within the airport area.

In addition, the Qataris have the right to exclusively own and manage the complex they will be putting up at the airport for an uninterrupted period of 80 years.

And another Qataris deal:

The Kenyan government is considering leasing a large tract of land in the Tana River Delta in eastern Kenya to Qatar’s government. In return, Qatar would build a port in the seaside town of Lamu that supporters of the deal say would provide thousands of jobs and boost tourism. But the proposed deal comes at a time when Kenya is grappling with famine, and critics say Kenya would be better off keeping the land in the hands of small farmers.

And the Lybian deals, you know them.

I wont talk of Maize theft when over 10 million kenyas are facing starvation from famine out of poor planning. Not talking of the shs 7billion oil theft when we are beseeching the western countries to loan us shs 32billion for food releife.

Who will save us! Where are we headed to…ofcourse the so called leaders that don’t pay tax and with a bloated cabinet of 44 and 90 assistant ministers want us to focus on a few things, equal sharing of power among the coalion partners(my foot) and vision 2030(hell on earth).

Massboycott:10th – 12th December 2008!

Dear Comrades,

The grand coalition leadership is in self destructive mode. They are presiding over all the conditions that caused the French revolution: detached and insensitive leadership; majority malnutrition and starvation; high national debt; inequitable taxation; consumerism among the ruling elite and high unemployment among other citizens. The symbol of the French revolution was “bread” (so close to our “unga”) and the uprising swelled over time.

As early as April 2008 Bunge la Mwananchi started the campaign to urge the government to check the increase in essential food items such as unga. As in the unprecedented French revolution before them where there was a notable mass uprising reaction that featured women marching on Versailles, Kibera women also recently defiantly sung: “tunataka bei ya unga iteremke” as Raila’s mercedez motorcade passed by.

Fellow Kenyans, we have an opportunity to be make history. WE WANT CHANGE BUT THROUGH NON-VIOLENCE:

1. Start mobilizing your friends and networks today;
2. On 10th ( World Human Rights Day) meet and organize yourselves as part of the Direct Action squad;
3. Write a letter to the editor expressing your opinion on current issues;
4. Send a text message to your member of parliament ( access phone numbers at www.bulamwa.co.ke) demanding to know when s/he is paying tax
5. On 11th let us walk to work to dramatize our demand that unga, petrol and kerosene should be reduced to 30/-, 65/- and 40/- respectively, send a text message to your member of parliament to express your dissatisfaction with the current status, avoid any fuel product; and
6. on 12th December (Jamhuri Day) join other Kenyans at the venues scheduled for public celebration especially Nyayo Stadium and use your mouth to petition your leaders to reduce further the prices of unga, kerosene and petrol.

Kenya National Civil Society Congress through Bunge la Mwananchi and Name and Shame Corrupt Networks (NASCON) have put in place safetynets such as lawyers, etc just in case.

This is your practical chance to be part of activities towards change as we mobilize and organize ourselves into direct and peaceful action to demand responsive leadership.

You can also download pamphlets for distribution the Partnership for Change campaign site by clicking HERE!

This article is from sukuma kenya blog

Dec 12 Protest against oppression by the so called “leaders” and insensitive government

This is a letter to the Members of Parliament. I will be blank and to the point. Good people, you are a disgrace to our nation.

No. You have actually become a curse to the poor. Beyond your bellies and the shiny cars you drive, you have no vision.

Now you have refused to pay tax. And to support your evil scheme, you have pimped two lies. One, that you are protected by the constitution. Big fat lie!

Even the judges, who argue protection, are wrong. Like the judges, you are misinterpreting the constitution to feed your greed.

Two, that you need the money to attend to funerals and other harambees at the constituency. Zero! With CDF, we do not need your cheap money. The constituency is being supported by our taxes, not your salaries.

IN FACT, I SUSPECT THAT YOU ARE stealing from the poor through CDF. My point? You have no point. Because of your greed, you have misread the mood of the nation.

And this is why I am attending the December 12 protest rally against you. All I need to know is the time, the place and the how!

I am inspired into civil disobedience by a 1968 book entitled Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. According to this Brazilian thinker, “…freedom is acquired by struggle, not by gift”

And those afraid of struggle, must be seen as siding with the oppressor. I want to submit to you that you have become the ‘new oppressors’.

You came to us as liberators from the Moi order. We trusted you with the change agenda and the liberation programme. But instead of bringing change, you conspired to steal from us.

This is how you increased your salaries to unimaginable figures. And we allowed you to. Now we are tired. We have realised that silence is the tool of oppression.

There is one more thing: you continue to underestimate our resolve. And on this, you are downright deluded. I want to put it to you that Kenyans are the most alert lot in Africa.

In Nigeria the Generals stole an election, the people cowed in fear. In South Africa, the party ‘thugs’ staged a palace coup against Thabo Mbeki, the people stared in disbelief. They did nothing.

In Zimbabwe, President Mugabe stole an election in broad daylight; the people whined and complained. They did nothing.

In Kenya, president Kibaki got some judge to swear him in at night; the people said “No!” In sum, our threshold for political non-sense is very low.

If you are not with the people, you are with the enemy. And on the matter at hand, the people have said “No!” No taxation, no representation!

If you will not be taxed, you cannot represent us. The question however is: are you reading the anger? Can you feel the groundswell against you as people seethe in resentment? Given your greed, I doubt it!

I have two other reasons why I will attend the December 12 rally against you. In January this year, we were at the brink of civil war. Now that some of you are on the ‘Waki List’, you have threatened a repeat.

And on this one, you have missed the point again. You want to use our young people as a human shield to protect your evil deeds.

In the meantime, you have not even resettled the IDPs and have no intentions, it seems. I will be attending the December 12 rally therefore to serve notice on two accounts.

One, if you do not style up, the next ‘civil war’ will be between us, the people, and you.
That the people have no glitch with each other. Our problem is you. Two, in the past, we thought you were the change makers.

Now we know we were wrong. We know that “…change is us”. The notice to you therefore is this: if you persist in your ways, change is coming.

It might not be the tsunami you talk about, but it will come in small instalments – little by little. After all, revolutions are made from small things.

In fact, the French revolution of 1789 was about ‘ugali’. And this brings me to the second reason why I will engage in civil disobedience come December 12.

Together with the food cartels, you have formed a class of ‘pigs’ similar to the one in George Orwell’s book The Animal Farm.

And your declaration to Kenyans is this: “…All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”. Your point? The class of ‘pigs’ has a right to enjoy Sh800,000 untaxed and to exploit the poor through food and petroleum cartels.

Like in this story, you are also telling us that the ‘government of pigs’ has a right to do anything it wishes. And this is why during one of the parties, the pigs sold a horse called Boxer for a crate of whisky.

I am therefore going to the December 12 rally to say “No way!” You will not use our children as a human shield from the ‘Waki process’.

SIMILARLY, YOU WILL NOT SELL the poor to the cartels for a box of whisky or whatever they give you. I am going to this rally to protest ‘economic impunity’.

Back to Paulo Freire’s book the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he tells us that Reality=the actual + the possible. This means that the reality we want as a country can be created through the possible.

But more fundamentally that the future is not something hidden in a corner: the future is something we build in the present.

And the present in now! This is, therefore, the time to stop the evil visited upon us by your lot.

Your constituents must stand up against you and be counted. My name is Mutahi Ngunyi, Citizen Number 4855678 and I want to be counted! Hon Kabando wa Kabando, I will be on your case if you refuse to pay tax!

Mutahi Ngunyi is a political scientist with The Consulting House, a policy and security think-tank for the Great Lakes region and West Africa.

Why enough is enough:We will not allow the bloated 40 member cabinet

During the beginning of this year(2008) Kenyans took a path less traveled by the civilized beings.We are ashamed and confounded of that ugly past.

In essence it happened so that our tribes men may enjoy power and by so doing somehow extend wealth to us.We Hope.Therefore when they incited us, we thought by following their words we will get to the promised land flowing with honey and milk. We killed our neighbors, Raped, Destroyed property and displaced the ‘foreigners’. I hate to see those ugly images (www.tafutabiz.com/KenyaViolence.htm). Let it never happen again.

The truth is now with us. Whatever we fought for was our self proclaimed leaders’ interests.

The IDPs are yet to be taken care of, indeed we will borrow some Kshs 34 billion to settle them, never the less no one seem to worry because the coalition is in the making. Infact we are going to have 40 ministers up from the already bloated 34. Regardless of the rise in basic commodities and astronomical inflation rate. Ofcourse each minister will have at least two limos, bodyguards, other privileges and untold amount ofallowances. Each  minister  will  have  a  Permanent  Secretary  and an Assistant Minister or two, each with similar privileges.

Today and ordinary MP pockets Kshs 800,000 per month, Assistant Minister at least Kshs 950,000, a Minister Kshs 1.1m. As tax payers we need to see returns. Why should we pay all this to single individuals whose only work is to Politic in funerals and make noise about everything/anything under the sun. What is their work? Are they realy ‘Leaders’?

Here comes a pertinet question at this point; Who is a leader?

In my opinion, a leader is one that inspires, gives direction, a servant of the people, dedicated and focused. Whatever the case we may not have many leaders today.Not in our parliament. The parliament has guys that are pursuing their selfish, gluttonous ambitions. They want your every coin in the name of tax whereas they don’t pay tax like any other Kenyan. Now who are these people? What do they represent?

What is the way forward Kenya?