mzeiya
Elder Lister
As posted by this dude on X.
Nation Media Group
Saturday, April 11, 2020
Those like me who grew up in the first two decades of independence will remember days when farming was a rewarding occupation.
Any crop grown — coffee, tea, maize, sugarcane, cotton, cashew nuts, pyrethrum, tobacco, name it — paid well and in good time.
Ordinary households — that is small-scale farmers and traders — had enough to eat, dress well and pay school fees and other bills.
Many families could also afford a small second-hand saloon car — mainly a Volkswagen, Ford Cortina, or Ford Escort, if not a Peugeot or Datsun pickup. Toyotas had not yet flooded our roads those days.
For us raised in then Rift Valley Province, KFA, short for Kenya Farmers Association, put a smile on our faces.
If we overheard our parents talk about the KFA cheque — and it unfailingly came — we knew there would be a merry Christmas and we would return to school come January.
Then, out of the blue, one early morning in the 1980s, we heard that KFA had been ordered to close shop. The decree came from the Head of State, Daniel arap Moi.
It was announced through the only radio station in the country at that time — VoK, now called KBC, and now headed by my friend, Dr Naim Bilal, formerly known as Mr Makau Niko.
BIWOTT'S THREAT
In our youthful age, we cried that night. The death of KFA meant our parents would henceforth operate on empty.
Food on the table would no more be a guarantee. There would be no new clothes at Christmas, and going back to school in time was doubtful.
Years later when I became a journalist, I met Mr Rueben Chesire, who was the chairman of KFA when it was ordered to wind up.
I asked him to tell me why the President of Kenya would wake up one morning and kill a farmers’ body.
He gave me a story that sounded half comedy, half tragedy. He and friends were having a social drink one evening at the Nakuru Rift Valley Sports Club when Cabinet minister Nicholas Biwott suddenly showed up and headed to their table without any courtesies.
Facing up to Chesire and in a threatening gaze, Biwott said: “You Rueben, we hear you have been going around boasting that KFA has more money than the government of Kenya.
Very soon you shall never again hear about that KFA of yours!”
BOSS TAKES OVER
That weekend President Moi addressed a rally at Afraha Stadium, where he made breaking news (literally that is what it was!) that KFA would be no more, to be replaced by an outfit called Kenya Grain Growers Co-operative Union (KGGCU), a thieving conduit whose story the less told the better.
That was Kenya of those days: that a private association would be dissolved, not through a members’ AGM as the law provides, but at a public rally or through a roadside decree!
Over lunch at the Nairobi Boulevard Hotel, Chesire gave me background to that story. He told me that when Moi was vice-president and Biwott his personal assistant (PA), the latter used to complain aloud that people in Mount Kenya region, and those in Nandi, Kericho, and Uasin Gishu districts, had no respect for the VP (allegedly) because they had money.
“Rich people don’t obey and have no regard for authority,” Biwott used to complain.
Chesire recalled one evening at Eldoret Sirikwa Hotel when Biwott unleashed in a torrent of anger.
“You people have no respect for us because you have money and we don’t! Wait until we get to power and we make the donkey catch up with the horse!”
He told me that was the “philosophy” behind the killing of the KFA, a fate that would soon befall other institutions and individual enterprises where there was money that the “system” — rather the “boss” — didn’t control.
Henceforth, it was the “boss” — also called HEDAM — who would decide which Kenyan should have money in the pocket and how much — and the “boss” would take it away when he felt like it!
BRINKMANSHIP
For that to happen, not just KFA but any other enabler institution that put money in farmers’ pockets, was hauled to the guillotine.
That included, among others, the Kenya Co-operative Creameries (KCC), Kenya Planters Co-operative Union (KPCU), Kenya Tea Development Authority (KTDA), Pyrethrum Board, Cotton Board, Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC), Agricultural Development Corporation (ADC), all sugar factories, and the Pan-African Paper Mills.
Then followed the turn for individual enterprises to be sabotaged into bankruptcy.
Among the most remembered cases were indigenous-owned banks and financial institutions forced to close shop in the mid-1980s: Madhupaper International, fronted by media mogul S.K. Macharia, and an indigenous giant conglomerate called JK Kalinga Industries.
At about that time, five indigenous entrepreneurs' bid to purchase the local franchise of the US tyre-manufacturer Firestone was sabotaged by the “system” at the last minute and the business bought by the “big man” and his associates.
Jubilee Alliance’s ‘Tuko Pamoja’ sloganeering and the white-shirts/red-ties PR razzmatazz, is all well known.
What is not known is how the two camps that could not see eye-to-eye in 2007 suddenly came together in 2012. Behind the scenes was deceit, brinkmanship and, yes, blackmail.
SUCCESSION WAR
It is a bizarre, untold story best understood when you get to know how the Jubilee “brothers” financed the blitzkrieg that had the coalition win 2013 election — against all odds.
A huge chunk of the campaign war chest came from one faction in the coalition. A little also came from notorious wheeler-dealers.
The deal, as negotiated, was that the faction with bigger financial muscle — thanks to old family money — would get the “big seat” but the other faction would be given Cabinet portfolios where there is “meat” — not just “bones” — so that they, too, would have something of their “own” come 2017 and beyond.
That was the condition put for the “donkey” in Jubilee to agree to travel the same road with the “horse”.
It is also where the 10/10 deal, disowned by Jubilee vice-chairman David Murathe, was sealed. Apparently, he had dashed out to the washrooms when that happened!
Nation Media Group
Saturday, April 11, 2020
Those like me who grew up in the first two decades of independence will remember days when farming was a rewarding occupation.
Any crop grown — coffee, tea, maize, sugarcane, cotton, cashew nuts, pyrethrum, tobacco, name it — paid well and in good time.
Ordinary households — that is small-scale farmers and traders — had enough to eat, dress well and pay school fees and other bills.
Many families could also afford a small second-hand saloon car — mainly a Volkswagen, Ford Cortina, or Ford Escort, if not a Peugeot or Datsun pickup. Toyotas had not yet flooded our roads those days.
For us raised in then Rift Valley Province, KFA, short for Kenya Farmers Association, put a smile on our faces.
If we overheard our parents talk about the KFA cheque — and it unfailingly came — we knew there would be a merry Christmas and we would return to school come January.
Then, out of the blue, one early morning in the 1980s, we heard that KFA had been ordered to close shop. The decree came from the Head of State, Daniel arap Moi.
It was announced through the only radio station in the country at that time — VoK, now called KBC, and now headed by my friend, Dr Naim Bilal, formerly known as Mr Makau Niko.
BIWOTT'S THREAT
In our youthful age, we cried that night. The death of KFA meant our parents would henceforth operate on empty.
Food on the table would no more be a guarantee. There would be no new clothes at Christmas, and going back to school in time was doubtful.
Years later when I became a journalist, I met Mr Rueben Chesire, who was the chairman of KFA when it was ordered to wind up.
I asked him to tell me why the President of Kenya would wake up one morning and kill a farmers’ body.
He gave me a story that sounded half comedy, half tragedy. He and friends were having a social drink one evening at the Nakuru Rift Valley Sports Club when Cabinet minister Nicholas Biwott suddenly showed up and headed to their table without any courtesies.
Facing up to Chesire and in a threatening gaze, Biwott said: “You Rueben, we hear you have been going around boasting that KFA has more money than the government of Kenya.
Very soon you shall never again hear about that KFA of yours!”
BOSS TAKES OVER
That weekend President Moi addressed a rally at Afraha Stadium, where he made breaking news (literally that is what it was!) that KFA would be no more, to be replaced by an outfit called Kenya Grain Growers Co-operative Union (KGGCU), a thieving conduit whose story the less told the better.
That was Kenya of those days: that a private association would be dissolved, not through a members’ AGM as the law provides, but at a public rally or through a roadside decree!
Over lunch at the Nairobi Boulevard Hotel, Chesire gave me background to that story. He told me that when Moi was vice-president and Biwott his personal assistant (PA), the latter used to complain aloud that people in Mount Kenya region, and those in Nandi, Kericho, and Uasin Gishu districts, had no respect for the VP (allegedly) because they had money.
“Rich people don’t obey and have no regard for authority,” Biwott used to complain.
Chesire recalled one evening at Eldoret Sirikwa Hotel when Biwott unleashed in a torrent of anger.
“You people have no respect for us because you have money and we don’t! Wait until we get to power and we make the donkey catch up with the horse!”
He told me that was the “philosophy” behind the killing of the KFA, a fate that would soon befall other institutions and individual enterprises where there was money that the “system” — rather the “boss” — didn’t control.
Henceforth, it was the “boss” — also called HEDAM — who would decide which Kenyan should have money in the pocket and how much — and the “boss” would take it away when he felt like it!
BRINKMANSHIP
For that to happen, not just KFA but any other enabler institution that put money in farmers’ pockets, was hauled to the guillotine.
That included, among others, the Kenya Co-operative Creameries (KCC), Kenya Planters Co-operative Union (KPCU), Kenya Tea Development Authority (KTDA), Pyrethrum Board, Cotton Board, Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC), Agricultural Development Corporation (ADC), all sugar factories, and the Pan-African Paper Mills.
Then followed the turn for individual enterprises to be sabotaged into bankruptcy.
Among the most remembered cases were indigenous-owned banks and financial institutions forced to close shop in the mid-1980s: Madhupaper International, fronted by media mogul S.K. Macharia, and an indigenous giant conglomerate called JK Kalinga Industries.
At about that time, five indigenous entrepreneurs' bid to purchase the local franchise of the US tyre-manufacturer Firestone was sabotaged by the “system” at the last minute and the business bought by the “big man” and his associates.
Jubilee Alliance’s ‘Tuko Pamoja’ sloganeering and the white-shirts/red-ties PR razzmatazz, is all well known.
What is not known is how the two camps that could not see eye-to-eye in 2007 suddenly came together in 2012. Behind the scenes was deceit, brinkmanship and, yes, blackmail.
SUCCESSION WAR
It is a bizarre, untold story best understood when you get to know how the Jubilee “brothers” financed the blitzkrieg that had the coalition win 2013 election — against all odds.
A huge chunk of the campaign war chest came from one faction in the coalition. A little also came from notorious wheeler-dealers.
The deal, as negotiated, was that the faction with bigger financial muscle — thanks to old family money — would get the “big seat” but the other faction would be given Cabinet portfolios where there is “meat” — not just “bones” — so that they, too, would have something of their “own” come 2017 and beyond.
That was the condition put for the “donkey” in Jubilee to agree to travel the same road with the “horse”.
It is also where the 10/10 deal, disowned by Jubilee vice-chairman David Murathe, was sealed. Apparently, he had dashed out to the washrooms when that happened!
