AFRICA CAN YOU STAND UP,YOUR TIME HAS COME

AFRICAN STATES NEED REFORMS IN GOVERNMENT STRUCTURES

IN KENYA:

Just after the DISPUTED General election in Kenya,the country fell into a state that none has ever contemplated facing,we saw stealing of votes and immediately after that there was an eruption of violence national wide and you might have thought it was the Bomb in Hiroshima Japan Because this violence was widespread in the whole republic with everybody saying NO! to the outright stealing of the leadership of the people,we saw looting of shops,killing of innocent people by police,neighbours revolted against each other and all that you can remember that took place....in this i see a conflict not only fueled by the election outcome but also by the income inequality that rocks our country,for instance am seeing the man who stole from the supermarket in Kisumu never stole because he had been denied a chance of being led by the president he chose but rather he stole because he has been living without yet some people who are few have been living with plenty so to him the target was where there was ready access and so to say where he deemed right for his purposes of stealing because they wouldn’t steal from fellow peasants since they have been living in the same world....They were tasting the world of the priviledged,they wanted to see whether living away from the tradition of one meal a day would give them energy to face the facts of life “loosing the presidency” then i can also add that there was need to take what was taken from the because you will agree with me that the owners of those supermarkets don't pay the locals or rather their workers well so if one got the opportunity of getting something from a person who has been oppressing him/her at work,he/she will fall for it with both hands. AND THIS IS SIMPLY BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT FIGHT FOR THE RIGHTS OF THESE WORKERS BECAUSE THOSE WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO FIGHT FOR THEM ARE GIVEN SOMETHING SMALL TO COVER UP THEIR WRONGS.

AM TALKING ABOUT INCOME INEQUALITY AND BAD GOVERNANCE IN AFRICA.

This man can eat this much

BUT...

This kid has been without anything for so long.

I will give good illustrations in the next context.

IN SOUTHAFRICA:

Back in 1948, just when the Apartheid Nationalist government was coming to power, Alan Paton published Cry the Beloved Country, one of the most beautiful and moving books ever to come out of Africa. It told the story of a pastor from rural Zululand who visits Johannesburg in search of his delinquent son. Sixty years later, as I asses foreigners fleeing Cape Town’s xenophobic mobs, I sense there’s more than enough material to write another African epic in similar vein.

This is it;

I imagine there will be three characters, whom I’ll call Z, D and W for now. Z will grow up in rural South Africa. His father will be a migrant labourer on the mines and his mother will die a slow death from HIV / Aids. As a child he will trudge five kilometres down the dusty road to the primitive school room. When his mother dies, he takes a bus to the big city where he is set down in the middle of a slum shanty town. A cousin allows him to sleep on a piece of cardboard in his shack. When the winter rains come, he pulls a garbage bag over his blanket to shield himself from the leaks.

Z is always hungry. At first he goes and stands by the roadside where the building foremen pick up labour for the day. Sometimes he’s lucky, sometimes not. Maybe, out of desperation he joins a gang and hijacks a car in the affluent suburbs? When he’s really lucky, he can spend an evening in the shebeen nursing a beer, tapping his foot to the local beat, watching a government minister pontificating on TV out of the corner of his eye.

Round him people are complaining. The government promised jobs and houses but nothing materialised. The fat cats with the right political connections spend their week-ends driving up and down the streets in their flashy cars, flaunting their wealth. And then there are all the foreigners from across Africa who undercut them in the labour marketplace or who own the only shop in the township and charge high prices.

D will also grow up in a rural area, only in Central Africa. He finishes school and trains to be a mechanic. One day his life is turned upside down when marauding militia shoot his parents, press-gang his brother and rape his sister. He decides to head for the peaceful El Dorado of South Africa. The journey is full of incidents. Long hours of walking along dusty tracks. The occasional lift on the back of a lorry. Odd jobs along the way. Dodging the border guards.

He reaches a South African city and finds some fellow Central Africans who offer him a spot in their lean to. His English is poor but he learns that his smile will earn an extra tip when he helps drivers to park in the centre of the city. A local restaurant owner is taken with his charm and offers him a job waitering to his many overseas guests who welcome someone who can speak French. He stands in long queues endlessly to get a work permit and is only successful when he pays a bribe. His skin is darker than that of the locals so he has to be careful when taking the train or the taxi back to the squatter camp..

W is a teacher in Zimbabwe, battling against the odds to provide children with the first rate education for which the country was renowned not so long ago. To make ends meet, she volunteers to be an election agent and is thrown into prison for a few days when the locals vote for the opposition party. She comes out to find her father has been beaten up by a bunch of thugs and decides the time has come to head South to where he can get proper medical treatment and she a secure job. They too end up in a squatter camp and she is snapped up to teach in a local school.

Somewhere in the book, of course, Z, W and D will meet up. Maybe Z will be part of the mob who, in their frustration, pick on the foreigners as the only ones around weaker than themselves and D is one of their targets? Maybe D finds W cowering behind a shack hiding from the crowd and helps her to safety? Maybe a romance develops between W and Z and it’s not popular with their neighbours? The possibilities are endless but one thing’s for sure, it’s going to be a real tear jerker - and based on the real life experiences of so very many extraordinary Africans.

In SouthAfrica i want to believe that whoever attacked the neighbour in the xenophobic saga did not do justice to the victim,but also let us check the root causes of certain problems because if you are to sit down and evaluate these issues you will realize that it all comes to leadership and the political trends,If we want peace in Africa we should start by correcting our government structures that don't favour the common man.

Barrack Obama a son of Kenyan soil is now the President of the United states of America,to African leadership and citizenship,there is a big lesson to learn here,
its time we rose above the partisan mentality and reasoning to help balance the Equation.

One day someone will write this book.
One day that writer will accomplish a dream.

Karua don't let anyone step on your toes.                                                                                                                    
 Before we went to the polls,we had three groups,the ODM,PNU and ODM-K.In what i have to say about Martha Karua i want to exempt the ODM because there is no one in ODM who is competing with Martha.

I want to remind some friends of mine alittle bit of history,during this time the PNU'S main objective was to unite as a party of political parties and help re-election of Mwai Kibaki;in my reasoning or the reasoning of the time PNU'S main Agenda was to sell Kibaki to the kenyans and this was evident when we came to party nominations,i remember that there almost occured a problem in the PNU concerning individual parties that had affiliation to Mwai Kibaki but never wanted to part with the identity of their respective parties,then it was agreed that the parties making PNU'S main goal,was to be together at the presidential level so as to fight for Kibaki but on matters of the constituency and civic leaders i understand it was agreed that parties will field their own candidates despite previous campaigns by George Nyamweya who was campaigning for a unilateral mode of nominations which required members either to run on a PNU ticket or forget headquater support (George Nyamwea happens to be on the same drive now though he was defeated by Karuas and Kombos)

In my reasoning PNU as a party had not been created in anticipation for 2012 but only 2007 and so after installing Mwai it was supposed to close shop.

WHY AM I SAYING ALL THIS?

I want to assume that now since the PNU achieved its goal of re-electing Mwai even if it was through a back door or so,it has achieved its goal and indeed those who are now crafting means of sustaining PNU are not genuine in their quest,they are simply being misused by a specific group which thinks it has a right to leadership in Kenya.

Its outright madharau for a loser in the previous election to come and start fighting the very people who fought for Kibaki to achieve power in whichever case.

That was for the PNU.

Now lets have a look at ODM-K.

In Kalonzo musyoka's persuit to get to a higher office more than that of the common minister that he used to be,he decided to break ranks with Agwambo so that he would have a higher bargaining power in the political market,what he deed thereafter was to court Mwai and make a private MOU which we saw although he kept denying that he had not met the then PNU aspirant for president. As time passed and we went to the polls actually the election placed him where he belonged and when the poll results were rejected by the Kenyans he was swift to declare his alliegence to Mwai by defending his presidency or his win for that matter in the scuffle at KICC,this he deed very fast so as to fulfill his promise to Mwai as before the polls and it did auger well for him because he was named Vice President (imagine taking Julia Ojiambo and Daniel Maanzo for a ride all that time) after taking up that office he was vocal in fighting against the ODM struggle and in so doing he was clearcutting his personality of a political materialist because in his campaign we had seen and heard how he was against working with Kibaki. (hypocricy indeed)

WHY THEN DID I BRING STIVO INTO THIS?

This man of Ukambani wants to make a living in spoilling for others,just wait and see how he plans to do that.

I HAVE COME FROM VERY FAR,NOW I WANT TO HIT ON THE NAIL:

Martha Karua was a major defence captain in the Kibaki troops when he was about to throw in the towel and concede defeat,during this time George Nyamweya was a loser somewhere in his constituency and was nursing the wounds inflicted to him by his constituent's votes,in this time he never was a challenge to anti-Kibaki forces,when i saw the other day on TV George Nyamweya giving an ultimatum to PNU affiliates either to comply with their plan to assimilate affiliates to one PNU party or face the axe from their respective constituency offices,i was wondering how on earth he would have the audacity to dare people who had been given a mandate by their constituents unlike him who was nominated to parliament,secondly i was astonished that he would do that even to those people who had fought for Kibaki to maintain his stay in office when he was almost shown the door!

you know sometimes people can play God and that is very very bad!!!

AND....

KALONZO MUSYOKA:

To me it seems that Kalonzo musyoka has already forgotten what he did to Raila,in PNU he was welcomed into the starting list of the game and now he wants to put the starting players on bench,when he came to ODM he wanted to replace Agwambo but the son of Oginga wouldn't allow that now he was invited as a guest into the PNU and now he thinks he can run the affairs of the party including choosing affiliation with specific people in preparation for a 2012 takeover.And in so doing he is repeating what he did in 2007.

UHURU KENYATTA :

To me it seems Jomo's son will never grow up,in 2002 Moi wanted to feed him on a silver spoon but it never was,in 2007 he was about to clearcut his role in kenyan politics when he was supporting ODM but he faltered that and to make it worse he spoilt the soup by resigning as the official leader of the opposition,this made him never to be trusted by kenyans because previosly kenyans thought he would wake up and rise against the tribal chains (if Uhuru would have stuck with ODM he would be a stronger figure because he would have risen from the tribalistic bracket and even the Rutos would be having a problem with him and something else KANU would be even stronger)

Then he joined Mwai with a hope of one day succeeding him,in this he was playing by the order set by Jommo kenyatta,Moi and even Mwai:the order of creaming leaders which will never be democratic.

AND now Uhuru still is waiting for an elders hand or even signal for him to behave like a grown up because he is still depending on the influence of his father and his father's friends and recently on that list we have president Kibaki.

FORGETING THAT NATURAL JUSTICE WILL ALWAYS CATCH UP WITH HIM.

Now all these people want to sit on Karua's head,to PUSH her down the table so that she isnt seen by the world.

I have a feeling that they have already coiled their tails because they know Martha not only has an appeal to the house of mumbi but also her record as the stern defender of Kibaki gave her credit long time back.

My advise to Martha is that never let anyone stop you even if you know your bid is alittle bit premature.

AND MY VERDICT:

1)Uhuru Kenyatta should grow up and start having personal drive instead of always waiting for somebody's back to use in climbing a wall.

2)Kalonzo Musyoka should go back to ukambani and work for his constituents because he hasn't done much for the people and he shouldn't forget that he is partly the reason why Kenyans died in the post poll era.

3) It's time women were given the opportunity,just check the record of women who are in the cabinet.

The botched results from the December 27, 2007 presidential elections in Kenya sparked a wave of violence across the country that left more than 1,000 dead and 600,000 displaced. Incumbent president Mwai Kibaki, representing the ruling Party of National Unity (PNU), was declared the winner of the presidential polls over Raila Odinga, of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). Supporters of the ODM, which had won 99 parliamentary seats against PNU’s 43 (out of 210 elected seats), charged that the election had been rigged. The chairman of the Electoral Commission of Kenya has since stated that the PNU and the ODM-K (an allied party) forced him to call the election, even with irregularities in the tallying.

1) The African Union’s Panel of Eminent Africans, which Kofi Annan led, mediated for nearly forty days. After these efforts, Kibaki and Odinga agreed to: end the violence, address the humanitarian situation, and resolve the political crisis through a National Accord and Reconciliation Act (hereafter the National Accord). Complementing the National Accord, the parties agreed to examine long-standing sources of grievances and establish an Independent Review Commission to examine the electoral process; a Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission; a Commission on Inquiry on Post-Election Violence; and the Constitutional Review Commission.

The main objectives of the National Accord are to create the positions of prime minister and two deputy prime ministers and establish a governing coalition comprised of cabinet appointees from both the PNU and ODM. The coalition government can dissolve if the current parliament is dissolved, the parties agree to it in writing, or if one party withdraws from the coalition.

2) Even though the National Accord is but one of several significant agreements between Kibaki and Odinga, it is undoubtedly the most important. Should it fail, the full scope of the reconciliation process could not be implemented, and violence could recur. Indeed, on April 8, the announcement of the suspension of the talks over the coalition cabinet’s composition resulted in violence in Kibera, a Nairobi slum.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the National Accord? What factors could increase the likelihood that the power-sharing coalition remains intact? What are the costs of withdrawing from the coalition government? An initial examination of internal and external sources of leverage suggests that the cost of withdrawing from the coalition must be clearer, domestic constituencies must be more actively involved, and the militia must be disarmed.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the National Accord

On March 19, the Kenyan parliament voted to amend the constitution to provide for a prime minister and two deputy prime ministers and, subsequently, enact the National Accord into law, making Odinga the prime minister. In a show of commitment, the bill was fast-tracked into parliament, reducing the bill’s review period from 14 to 6 days.

3) The most important aspect of the National Accord is the political space it provides to address the deeper sources of conflict in Kenya.

By assenting to the creation of the position of prime minister, Kibaki provided Odinga with a long-sought position. A widely reported memorandum of understanding between Kibaki and Odinga during the 2002 election promised to create the position for Odinga. However, soon after taking office, Kibaki reneged. Similarly, a key component of the constitutional reform debated in 2005 included the creation of the post of a significantly powerful prime minister; Odinga supported it while the version the government put forth reduced the powers of the prime minister. The national referendum, which featured the government’s proposal, lost. The National Accord thus deals with a key opposition grievance—that the presidency has too much power. Less overtly, the National Accord’s coalition government neutralizes, to a degree, charges that non-Kikuyu have been marginalized from power under the Kibaki regime. The post-election violence took on a distinct ethnic tone, with supporters of Odinga, a Luo, charging that Kibaki, a Kikuyu, and his administration have marginalized non-Kikuyu. While there is no dominant ethnic group in Kenya, the Kikuyu are the largest group, comprising 21 percent of all Kenyans. The Luo make up 13 percent of the population. The rest of the population divides into five main ethnic groups.

4) By addressing these triggers of violence—both at the political and the societal level—the National Accord provides the initial political space to move forward and stop the violence.

Still, power-sharing agreements are notoriously fragile. They can break down because: impasses cannot be resolved as a result of the decision-making process in place; actors outside the coalition undermine decisions; one or more members of the coalition continually feels marginalized; or one party feels that it can gain more by not cooperating with the coalition’s decisions. Indeed, we have already begun to see the strains of the coalition in Kenya. The PNU and ODM experienced great trouble in naming a cabinet. This difficulty prompted a few parliamentarians and community leaders to call for fresh elections and triggered several incidents of violence—placing the agreement’s survival in the balance.

5) Indeed, in Kenya’s case, the challenge is to keep both parties from withdrawing from the agreement. To some degree, the challenge is greater with the PNU than the ODM. It would be less costly for the PNU to leave; if the PNU were to pull out of the coalition, Kibaki would remain president and the PNU would have cabinet positions. In contrast, if the ODM formally left the coalition, it would also mean relinquishing the premiership and cabinet positions. While the threat of violence from the ODM party militants may deter the PNU, it is not clear how powerful that threat is: will ordinary citizens heed the call to demonstrate to the degree seen in January, after such a bloody post-election experience? Differing ODM and PNU interpretations of the National Accord, coupled with the ambiguous penalty for reneging, have underscored the agreement’s fragility.

6) Besides dissolution of parliament, which would entail new elections, the National Accord does not indicate the steps to be taken if the coalition dissolves by other means—thus the penalties from withdrawing are unclear. While the comments by certain MPs and other community leaders suggest that elections will follow the coalition’s dissolution, this ambiguity works in favor of the withdrawing party. Rather than calling for immediate elections, the withdrawing party—especially if it is the PNU—could delay new elections until the end of the electoral term, a less costly penalty than immediate elections. Alternatively, the ODM or PNU could threaten immediate elections as a bargaining chip. A clearer understanding of the costs of reneging on the agreement could help the parties work through impasses.

While international and regional diplomatic pressure helped to bring the two sides to the negotiating table, employed in isolation, they are in a weak position to sanction and influence Kenya’s politicians over the National Accord. Even though a number of donor nations withdrew funding or threatened do so (the U.S. warned that it would not engage in "business as usual"

7) their leverage is not absolute. Unlike many countries in Africa, only four percent of Kenya’s gross national income is derived from development assistance.

8) Furthermore, Kenya’s high growth rate and location as a regional business hub make it an East African hegemon. Several countries depend on Kenya’s success. As the crisis unfolded, Tanzania experienced a decrease in cross-border trade, while Uganda and Rwanda experienced fuel shortages, as its imports remained blocked at the port of Mombassa. Furthermore, Uganda must now contend with 12,000 Kenyan refugees.

9) Thus, pressure to remain in the power-sharing coalition cannot only come from regional leverage or the larger international community. The incentive to remain in the coalition must also come from the sources that pushed constitutional reform—the domestic constituencies.

10) More concretely, the African Union must augment its panel with significant members of civil society organizations that can monitor and evaluate the political parties.

Notably, the Kenyan business community, having prospered under the Kibaki regime and thus holding a notable stake in maintaining peace, should be part of the domestic constituency recruited to help keep the agreement on track.

During the crisis, the business community lost $500 million a week.¹² In the first month of the crisis, nearly 50,000 jobs were lost. In fact, these losses were so significant that they propelled the business community to issue a joint statement supporting the mediation efforts.¹³ In this way, domestic pressure can be applied to help keep the power-sharing agreement together.

The armed domestic militia groups should be kept at bay. The sporadic, but continuing violence exacted by armed groups such as the Saboat Land Defense Forces (SLDF) and the Mungiki (to name two dominant groups) gives the impression that the peace dividends are not felt beyond parliament. Although these two groups formed for different reasons, their objectives are similar: to retaliate for real or perceived ethnic marginalization. The SLDF formed in response to land distribution plans that the government implemented; there are allegations that some members of government support the group. The Mungiki initially formed in response to former president Daniel arap Moi’s oppression of the Kikuyu and now claims to defend their interests in the Rift Valley. They commit notoriously gruesome acts of brutality and are known to levy taxes on public transportation operators and businesses as a means to raise funds. As with the SLDF, there are some indications that they have ties to sitting politicians.¹⁴

The government took aggressive steps to demobilize and disarm the SLDF in the weeks after the signing of the National Accord, while the Mungiki staged a 3,000-person demonstration in downtown Nairobi on March 6 to let people know they ‘still exist.’ Furthermore, on April 14, clashes involving the Mungiki resulted in four deaths.¹⁵ However, the government’s strategy in dealing with the SLDF was heavy handed—some civilian deaths were rumored to have occurred—and shrouded in mystery, as the media was barred from the area.¹⁶ It is important that the demobilization and disarmament processes must be transparent and not lend themselves to be manipulated as ethnic targeting. The government must also take steps to address the threat of Mungiki violence. Concurrently, the government, in partnership with civil society, must begin to tackle the underlying factors that give rise to these militia groups.

Conclusion

Rightly, the National Accord points to the need to address long-festering issues to engender peace. As such, durable peace will entail reintegrating the displaced, addressing land tenure concerns and confronting the human rights abuses that have taken place at the hands of government. But these important long-term steps cannot be adequately fulfilled if the agreement, which mandates cooperation and collaboration, is not strengthened. In the short term, the power-sharing agreement must be prevented from dissolving to ensure that the other important commissions will be successful. To hold the power-sharing arrangement together, the involvement of the African Union should be bolstered by reaching out to civil society organizations, the militia groups must cease operations and penalties for dissolving the coalition must be clearly established.