Why Kenyans bake their bread in street battles

After a long and hard fought 20 years, Kenya seems to have its best chance of having a new constitution.

There is guarded excitement in the air — a familiar feeling to those who lived in Uganda 15 years ago.

Strange things happen when new constitutions are made.

Even those politicians who are unhappy on the whole, find they can’t quite criticise because, as it happens, there will always be something they can live it.

These days, most African constitutions improve women’s representation in politics, for example.

So you have to be careful about mouthing off against such a constitution, just because it did not establish a Senate as you had wished.

Female voters might think you don’t wish them well.

In Uganda in 1995, a government minister made the comment about the constitution that turned out to be the truest.

During a talk show, Maj-Gen Kahinda Otafiire, now Trade and Industry Minister, said the constitution wasn’t a magic wand that would solve the country’s problem because it was “only the butter with which the bread of politics is eaten. We still have to work at making the bread”.

Otafiire is one of the most controversial figures in Ugandan politics, and has perhaps East Africa’s sharpest political tongue.

When he was accused of grabbing a wetland for real estate development, he retorted that he wasn’t a frog to live in a swamp.

During Uganda’s occupation of eastern DR Congo, an international report accused him of being one of the key players in the looting there.

When he was asked if he feared he would be tried for war crimes in DRC, Otafiire typically replied: “I have nothing to worry about. Did you hear of me eating pygmies in Congo?”

Because of such colourful comments, his insightful remarks on the constitution are not remembered.

However, 15 years later, many celebrated features of the 1995 constitution have been overturned, including the presidential two-term limit.