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When six agencies fail, it’s a conspiracy: The tragicomedy of the Mau evictions

Friday August 17 2018
mau

A child outside his smouldering family home in the Kipchoge area. The Kenyan government is evicting “illegal settlers” from the Mau forest. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE | NMG

By TEE NGUGI

The importation of poisonous sugar into the country could not have happened if just one – yes, one – agency had performed its duty. Instead, and incredibly, six departments and agencies failed to perform their duty.

The Treasury minister failed to specify and monitor who could import, the quantity, and the duration of the import period.

The Sugar Board failed to check the import licenses of the importers. Port authorities failed to ascertain compliance with various requirements. The Kenya Revenue Authority failed to check if the imports were all exempt from tax.

The Kenya Bureau of Standards failed to inspect the sugar. Police on the roads failed to inspect the trucks transporting the sugar to ascertain compliance with requirements governing transportation of foodstuff.

If it were not for CS Fred Matiang'i sounding the alarm, we would have continued consuming in ignorant bliss a potentially carcinogenic product.

Were it failure of one agency, we could dismiss it as an oversight or an anomaly. But when six agencies fail, it cannot be a coincidence, an anomaly or oversight. It is co-ordinated fraud with one purpose only – self-enrichment. Who gives a damn if the population is poisoned in the process?

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Elsewhere, these infractions or derelictions of duty would have led to the complete overhaul of the six agencies, in addition to criminal prosecution of key officials. Not here, though.

The worry now is that we may have been consuming other poisonous products, believing that agencies mandated to protect us were doing their job.

What are the immediate and long-term health risks associated with consuming products laced with poisonous metals? Could the explosion of cancer in the country be linked to consumption of imported poisonous foodstuffs? The Kenya Medical Association should now, with the greatest urgency, move to clarify these matters.

Government agencies facilitating actions detrimental to citizens is again being demonstrated in another ongoing saga – the Mau Forest evictions. Many of the residents now being forcibly remove, moved into this important water tower decades ago. Some have known no other home.

Most of these residents were sold the land by highly placed individuals in the government. They were given title deeds by government agents. It is also a well-known fact that one-time high-ranking government officials own thousands of acres in the Mau. In addition, the government established the Nyayo Tea Zones in a section of the forest, and has put up schools and police posts in the area.

So where were the ministers of the environment when all this was happening? Where was the National Environmental Management Agency, the most useless institution ever conceived by man?

Where was parliament, the custodian of the public good? As in the sugar saga, multiple government agencies, institutions and officials not only failed to do their duty but actually facilitated the Mau Forest settlement.

As a result of these multi-agency failures, experts say the livelihoods of millions of people around the Mau and as far away as Lake Victoria are slowly being destroyed.

The coalition government of 2008-2013 attempted to deal with the Mau problem. But politicians, including the now Deputy President William Ruto, politicised the issue. They framed the Mau evictions, not as an environmental protection measure, but as a pogrom against an ethnic community.

It was standard ethnicisation of an issue in order to accrue political capital. In Kenya, every politician of every ethnicity worth his or her debased salt quickly masters this dangerous but simple and effective technique.

First, create or heighten a sense of community grievance. Second, in coded and emotive language, blame people from other communities as the source of the persecution.

And finally, summoning as much passion as your hypocritical skills will allow, declare that you will stand with the people against injustice. Politicians advanced in this technique even throw in a Mandelasque line about being prepared to die.

In the midst of the ongoing evictions, we were treated to a classic demonstration of this technique by Senator Kipchumba Murkomen. He stormed into the Mau and blamed unnamed “crooks” for the evictions. He even threw in the bit about being ready to pay the ultimate price.

The argument here is not that evictees should not be heard. The argument is settlement of the Mau was facilitated by the government through acts of commission or omission.

Therefore, the evictees have an absolute right to resettlement and/or compensation. And those who facilitated the illegality in the first place should be prosecuted.

Tee Ngugi is a political and social commentator based in Nairobi

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