Looking Back

So around June of this year I got this great idea of having my own radio station. A place that I was going to use to agitate for political and social issues that affect our country Kenya, our continent Africa and more so our lives here in the Diaspora. To be honest it has been quite a journey and it as also been very exciting to say the least. I have not only managed to learn a couple of crafts like sound engineering, web design, script writing, marketing and promotion among other things. But one common theme that ties all those together is that this new journey is much more demanding than I ever envisioned.

I am glad that I have some very good able partners during this journey, Mel and Man Solo. When I thought about this idea initially I knew immediately that I will have to surround myself with people that I not only trust but can be able to give a 100% once they commit and I am so glad how things have turned out. It has been exactly 72 days since we first launched the Truthsayer show on September 9th of 09. Yes the proverbial 9/9/09 at 9pm date. So far we have been able to produce a weekly show ever since then despite of the challenges that have been our way. Some of them are comical as one night getting to the studio to realize that our electricity had been disconnected. By the way that was 2 hours before we had to go live. We still managed to not only produce the show but it was a very good show.

I think the big reason why we are still doing this day in and day is mainly because of our loyal fans, some who have never missed a single show. Some of them have actually become our advisers on content and we have been reaching out to them regularly to seek out their valuable opinion. I will not mention them by name but we are forever thankful.
The three of us are planning to start blogging and discussing about our growth and our future as we keep on agitating for the change that we believe in.

To steal the famous words of the current president of the United States campaign slogan..... Yes we can!!!

The Mau Madness

So let us start with the facts.
After years of invasion of the Aberdares and Mau water catchment areas, and many failed eviction attempts, the Kenyan government and the National Environmental Management Authority came up with a National Environmental Action Plan Framework to be executed between the years 2009 and 20013. This was in accordance to the National Developmental and Vision 2030. In that framework various stakeholders tied closely development goals to environmental protection of various water catchment areas and other vulnerable ecosystems in Kenya .

Among the issues that were raised in the framework was that the Mau Forest Complex was being deforested at an alarming rate due to charcoal production, logging, encroachment and settlements. One quarter of the Mau forest, some 100,000 hectares has been destroyed since 2002. Other catchment areas are the Aberdares Range , Mt Elgon, Cherangani hills and Kakamega Forest faced a similar fate. The reality is that 5000 hectares of forest cover is being lost every year through illegal logging, encroachment and settlement of people in forest reserves.

Among the solutions proposed was to implement and enforce the Forest act of 2005.One way to implement the act according to the Mau task Force report passed by parliament and amended by the cabinet was to evict squatters, and even legit land owners from the water catchment areas and compensate those with valid title deeds.

Ok those were the preceding facts. Now the big question is what the hell happened. How come this issue has become so politicized?

Once approximately 3000 people were evicted from the Mau all hell broke loose. Most Rift Valley MP’s rose in anger and indignation regarding the eviction and decided to primarily target the Prime Minister Raila Odinga. Recently the Environmental PS had tabled in parliament a list of all the big land owners. The full list can be found on the Kenyan Pundit blog site and lists many luminaries of the former KANU government. Among them are the former president Moi and many others. Most were part and parcel of the now indignant MP’s.

So this is the part that I get really pissed -when I hear that Zakayo Cheruiyot the owner of 20.81 hectares valued at Kshs 4,161,184 or Gideon Moi the owner of 141 hectares valued at Kshs 28,352,254 and many other famous land grabbers are now the voice of the landless. The same leaders are now screaming murder at how unfair the Kenyan government has been. This is after years of grabbing any free piece of land they could lay their thieving hands on. The Mau list documents that thousand of hectares in the Mau were grabbed by the so called saviors. Why the pretence, why are Kenyans agreeing to be hoodwinked again? Hundred of thousands of IDPs were evicted from their homes, some killed and many brutalized. To date we still have most of those IDPS in camps. Where is the righteous anger?

Having said that I have to admit that the government did fail big time in how they conducted the Mau eviction. I really don’t know any humane way this eviction could have been done, but maybe having people move out of their homes to the roadside gave a lot of fuel to this political drama that we are facing, minister Wekesa and his callous statements, minister Shaban the incompetent special programs leader and not forgetting the Deputy PM Uhuru the minister of finance who forgot to allocate any money for this first phase of evictions. Mix that with the political rhetoric and peni mbili journalism, and we now have another political headache that may also come to haunt us in 2012. Remember in Kenya we bury our heads in the sand waiting for election time to settle scores. The constitution draft has completely been forgotten

Sadly, former kleptomaniacs of the infamous Youth for KANU 92 are now coming out as the righteous saviors. KANU the infamous party that almost bankrupted Kenya is smelling blood and starting to regroup. The Mau issue has become their perfect launching pad. Look at the leaders of the recent fundraiser at the Panafric Hotel. Most are just nothing but the remnants of KANU who somehow have managed to redefine and rebrand themselves. Most are now in parliament via many vehicles be it ODM or PNU.

As much as I feel bad about the rhetoric that has been directed towards the PM Raila his allying with the former KANU leaders has taught him one thing, their true colors. These individuals have no reason to care for Kenya . They robbed the country blind for 24 years, and are now back to make sure there are never held to account. And as usual we Kenyan’s are nothing but bystanders. And of course the media has become a major propaganda machine of the leaders.

Join us tonight as we talk about this issue regarding Mau and many other interesting topics at www.truthsayershow.com. As usual we will keep it so real, so truthful, and will never shy away from controversy.

Was justice ever my shield and defender

So the big topic that has been most contentious on our weekly radio show The Truthsayer talk show has been what to do with the perpetrators of the so called post election violence. And here I am not talking about the big pins that are allegedly already on the scope of the international criminal court; No…. I am talking about the foot soldiers.

These have been the weapons used year in and year out by our politicians. Yes in my opinion as long as you have enough foot soldiers to maraud, kill, burn and pillage at a moment notice, it does not matter how many top leaders you take to The Hague, this event will keep on happening just as soon as we get another leader willing to spill some blood for power.

Let me reference the two current atrocities that have been committed in the recent years. The Bosnia and Herzegovina war in the early 90s where the Slobodan Milosevic Government deliberately targeted Muslim Serbs and Croats and the Rwanda genocide.

Most of the top leaders involved in the war crimes during the Bosnia war were indicted by the international criminal court including the two former presidents, Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic. Remember its purported that the Serbian Police, Soldiers, paramilitary groups and even some Serbian villagers started carrying out war crimes with the occupation of Bosnian territories. After the war was done and over, I know that most of the top echelons were held to account. The good news is, justice has never slowed down, Former soldiers involved in the crimes are being pursues as a far as Phoenix Arizona. Yes even the foot soldiers were not let to go scot free. I recently read that some Croats soldiers are facing criminal charges for executing 7 Serbian soldiers who were had been imprisoned by the Croatia military as recently as July 2009. Even in Bosnia foot soldiers are being tried for various crimes they committed during the 3 year war

In Africa the Rwanda genocide clearly taught us the power of foot soldiers where in approximately a hundred days more than 20% of the country was decimated. Estimates of around 500,000 to 1000,000 people killed. Thousands of militias belonging to Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi were organized to start systematic killings of the minority Tutsis. Most of us know the horrors that befell that small eastern African country. And as much the major blamed fell to the organizers and financiers of the genocide, more than 120,000 foot soldiers were arrested for their participation in the genocide. Some people quote the famous Gacaca court system to illustrate that the foot soldiers were let to go free, but in reality the Gacaca court system vision was to promote community healing by making the punishment of perpetrators faster and less expensive for the state. Yes People were still prosecuted and punished. Wikipedia has a good article on how the court system worked.

You notice I went straight to the big cases where foot soldiers have been used to commit crime, but in those instances even the foot soldiers have been held accountable or there has been an attempt to bring them to justice.

Going back to our country Kenya, marauding gangs in the North Rift and Naivasha and other towns were involved in the killings of hundreds of people. Not forgetting the police who used live bullets on civilians. The reality is up to know very few people have been prosecuted. We all had our hopes on Ocampo the ICC prosecutor, but we are tending to forget the foot soldiers are also as dangerous if not held to account. They are the never ending wood that will always keep the fire of impunity burning. An endless supply I tell you. The leaders are but the matchstick and accelerant.

Let me illustrate my point using a hypothetical foot soldier. Picture an 18 year old young man who was involved in the 1992 ethnic clashes. Chances are he was never prosecuted, and all that he had to endure was the Kiliku report… In 1997 more emboldened and having tasted battle and carnage five years before, he most likely become a more effective foot soldier causing great harm as a 23 year old. Again the results of that carnage and murder resulted with us having another commission set up “the Akiwumi report”. Very few people were ever prosecuted for the 1997 ethnic clashes despite hundreds of deaths and destruction of property.

In the 2002 elections he did not see much action, as the whole country turned against the Moi government. I am sure he missed killing a couple of people and burning a couple of houses.

By 2008 our now 33 year old hypothetical foot soldier was even now more emboldened, determined and experienced. Chances are he was no longer just a mare foot soldier but has climbed up in rank among his peers to say platoon leader. As Kenya burned for two months, beyond the rhetoric and incitements from political leaders, beyond the financing of the violence or the logistic, at its foundation lay a perfect killing machine, a foot soldier who knew very well that he may never been held to account for what he does. And killing and destroy he did. From burning a church in Kiamba to burning a whole family of 19 people in Naivasha.

There were many people who were shocked by the ferocity of the attacks. They totally forgot that while they had been burying the heads in the sand, there was emerging a group of foot soldiers that had neither remorse nor boundaries. Cold killing machines just waiting to be activated every election year, confident on the fact that justice was but an illusion in a country whose anthem proudly declares “Justice be our shield and defender”.

Now it has been close to two years since the post election violence, and chances are our hypothetical foot soldier is still roaming free waiting for 2012. By the he will be a 38 year old leader with close to 20 years of experience in killing, pillaging and rape. This time around its rumored machetes and clubs are no longer the weapons of choice. The foot soldiers are now slowly acquiring all sorts of firearms as they re-arm in the inticiption of the blood bath of 2012.

On the surface the Kenyan parliament, is playing hide and seek in regard to the imanyara bill. More so the Kenyan government and our toothless ineffective AG are still continuing to hoodwink Kenyans, willing us to forget the past and look to the future. On one hand announcing how willing there are in prosecuting the people involved in the post election violence to the full extent of the law, and on the other hand declaring that we should forgive and forget and move on. Secretly politicians are busy planning which ethnic tribe will need to be removed from their constituency to ensure another victory; better still hoping Ocampo will come and cart away his political enemies.

On the other hand our foot soldier is waiting, he may be a Mungiki, a Chinkororo, Kalenjin warrior, the Taliban gang or maybe the Sabaot Land Defense, but he is waiting, waiting for the next chance to prove that 1300 lives lost two years ago were just but child play, just but the beginning. I pray that we wake up my fellow countrymen and remember the words, Justice be our shield and defender

Nervous about the journey

I am sitted right now in my living room with this bad cold. But I am more nervous about the radio station which now permeates even my dreams. I know there is a need of a real discussion where you hear peoples voices (written forums tend to bring the worst out of people coz of anonymity)

a radio station when you call in, chances are, there is someone who knows you that is going to be listening. So you will either be fake or frank.

I guess that is why am nervous. Wondering how this thing is gonna turn out. How many friends am I gonna loose (I will attack your elected leaders) and how many supporters are we gonna get.

One thing for sure I am not planning to get into parliament and this is not a small thingy to try and get me into that money minting job that all crave for.

Instead I hope to totally put our elected leaders on a microscope and make them squirm and incomfortable.

Kenyans tend to be on an auto pilot where they realise they have it bad but they dont care. I really hope a mass will arise that actually gives a sh** about our country.

Am out

The journey begins of the Kenyan online radio talk show. The truthsayer talkpoint

I will write more about this very exciting project that I am embarking on. this is the introduction, I will blog and we will chat and debate and push the kenyan issues to the forefront. Politics will be discussed for an hour twice a week on my online radio show. We will debate, deliberate, put pressure. Put those Mps on notice, the president, the prime minister and all this old school Kenyan establishment that think its their God given duty to destroy Kenya and drive it to the ground.

I know there is a need for a frank discussion about Kenyan issues on radio.

Why I chose an online medium is because of the obvious, less regulation and censorship. No external pressure that end up diluting your voice and so many reasons. I know radio is gonna go online in the near future.

So ladies and gentlement this is the introduction and I know I will get support from many of you. Go ahead and follow my blog as I enter this new world