I will leave Odera and Emanyulia alone for now. We shall revisit them later. You recall the man who alleged that his cow was stolen, but was quick to join the presumed rustler? He joined the thief at a meat eating party, to enjoy the stolen animal’s intestines. 
 
That they are now bosom friends is behind us. They enjoy stolen meat as we salivate. But give them time. We have the dismissal of Cabinet Secretary Justin Muturi to grapple with. There is the clobbering of MP Peter Salasya to wonder about, and President William Ruto’s odysseys across the country to try to understand. 
 
 We have Raila Odinga’s peace mission in South Sudan to pray about. Then there are efforts to reconstitute the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission to watch. Election theft often begins here. We cannot even handle all of these concerns. 
 
There are rumours to gauge. Is there a State favourite in the IEBC making process?  Do Kenyans need assurance that there are no blue eyed boys, and no favourite lady?  Do Kenyans need, especially, to be reassured that the selection panel has no instructions from above? That a certain lady, for example, must chair the commission? Have we heard that certain cowboys must make it to the commission?
 
Peter Salasya was beaten up. He was almost thrown into the dustbin, at Nyayo Stadium. As he could not fit in the bin, they threw the thing at him. The vocal Mumias East MP says that his assailants wanted to kill him, on account of his incessant trenchant criticisms of ODM Leader, Raila Odinga. Salasya, previously an ardent Raila supporter, now says that the ODM Leader has betrayed the Opposition. He has begun a campaign to shove ODM and Raila out of Luhya Western Kenya. 
 
Salasya can be quite intemperate, and it is rather difficult to tell what, exactly, went on at Nyayo Stadium. He was there to watch a match between the national football team, Harambee Stars, and Gabon’s national team, in the World Cup qualifiers. What we know is that we have seen pictures of the man being clobbered and frogmarched out of the stadium. We have also seen him bare chested, looking like one who has been properly sorted out. 
 
Salasya was manhandled as senior State officers watched. Some allegedly howled and encouraged the assailants. Is it true that the violence against the MP had their pre-planned blessings? Why have they said nothing about the attack, by the time of this writing? Do we read here an attempt to silence dissent? Do we seem to have travelled on this slippery road before? 
 
Whatever the answers, Kenyans need to be unafraid, for their democratic space is in danger. Indeed, uniformed officers have come out of their own barricaded spaces, to warn Kenyans against saying things like President “Ruto must go.”
 
These top persons in the disciplined forces say that they will “protect the Constitution of Kenya (2010), on how government is formed, and office vacated and power passed on.” This is good to know. Every Kenyan of goodwill must agree with them. The Constitution is sacrosanct. It is edifying to hear that the Kenya Defence Forces Chief say that the military will defend the Constitution. 
 
What has not been said, however, is protection of the Constitution against the present unlawful joint Executive that has been formed by Raila and President Ruto. What the two leaders have done is against Articles 3(1) and 3(2) of the Constitution. Article 3(1) says, “Every person has an obligation to respect, uphold and defend this Constitution.” And 3(2) reads, “Any attempt to establish a government otherwise than in compliance with this Constitution is unlawful.”
 
Where does this leave those who say they are protecting the Constitution? Then there is the grapevine about the IEBC being stage-managed to lead to manipulated presidential elections and, therefore, to forming government outside a proper democratic constitutional order. Now that they have elected to speak, the Chief of the Defence Forces, Charles Kahariri, and the National Intelligence Service Boss, Noor Haji, must go the whole hog. When will they protect the Constitution and when will they not?
 
When Article 3(2) is abused by their appointing authority, do they also need to protect it? When an MP is beaten up for being critical of the government, does the Constitution need protection by Noor and Kahariri? When the Speaker of the National Assembly is also a Party leader, and the Courts rule this as unconstitutional, does the Constitution not require protection by State security officers? Is protection of the Constitution of Kenya by these authorities selective? 
 
 
 
 

So the Finance thing eventually went through. The Hustler man signed it into law and Bwana Omutatah of Busia took a beeline to court, kupinga. And our man, Orende of Emanyulia, is now born again. The Wajackoya man called Orende, did not know left or right on the puzzle called the Finance Bill. Yet, he is now the local expert on the matter, in this land where wisdom flows like a river. They say here that all you need to do, is to take a chilly morning bath in the river called Olubaale, and presto!
 
The people of this Emanyulia say that they are more learned than all university professors rolled into one because of this stream. They say that they are Namukunda, the learned ones. And Orende is our captain of learning and knowledge. Someday, I will tell you about the origins of these names Namukunda and Olubaale. Of course they come from Bananaland, huko Uganda. But if you know a thing or two about the famous Lubaale Cult and the Kabaka, then you are on the way.
 
And so Orende goes to the River Olubaale, which is just a small stream, the baby of a river, in fact. He comes back glowing and flowing with wisdom, courtesy of spiritual inspiration that extends beyond his regular big books, and beyond the Wajackoya cigarettes that he takes for breakfast. We are assembled in the big Liyembekho of Emanyulia, which is right in Orende’s great grandfather’s shamba. There are all manner of scary traditional paraphernalia in this place.
 
‘Do not be afraid, because of this place, and these hustler things that the big hustler in Nairobi is doing,’ the Wajackoya man opens, ‘They are passing things, but they are also necessary. That is why you should not worry so much about this money thing that will come to pass.
 
‘You, see,’ he carries on, dragging hard on the stump in his hand, his eyes now huge and red, ‘Our commonwealth is truly in a bad place. Worse than ever. We are hungry most of the time, like the animals Mister George Orwell was telling us about, long ago. Our lives are laborious, with little to show for all our labour. We feel all the time, like another man called Mosese wa Francis Imbuga. Remember him who said that it was better while we waited for this hustler thing, because we lived on hope? Now, it appears, there is nothing to hope for, except more tax, maandamano and maneno.
 
‘But what did we expect? Our commonwealth has been raided and harassed for sixty years-plus. Each time the new sheriffs arrive, they have sharpened their teeth like rodents. They try biting anything and everything in sight. They even try eating the metallic objects in the place. They arrive not to work, but to bark and eat. That was why the sheriffs who arrived in the Big House on the Hill with Mzee Mwai son of Kibaki were saying, “It is our turn to eat.”’
 
‘If we don’t move away from this “turn to eat” thing, it will finish us. It will eat us all up, instead. The hustler man must kill this “turn to eat” thing before it eats up everything and everyone. This thing eats up all the food, the plates and cutlery, the tables and the waiters. It even eats up the cooking place and the fire. When it is done with us, there will be nothing, not even the fire for cooking the next cost of living – which is to say for cooking ugali.”
 
We were looking at the thin man, perplexed, wondering what got into his head this time. ‘Can’t you see we are hungry, Prof. Orende?’ Alubiri son of Umurumba said, ‘Can’t you see the people are suffering, everywhere? Instead of providing something to eat, the hustler man just smiles and says things like, ‘Watu walipe tax. Oh, housing. Oh, jobs, jobs. Oh, sijui, oh.’
 
The Olubaale spirits have told Orende that there is a price to everything. ‘The governors are asking for money, au wafunge county government. The teachers are saying schools hazina pesa. The doctors are saying pesa pap! Even the wizara za serikali are asking for money. They say that they cannot pay mshahara on time. Some MPs are threatening with maandamano because hakuna barabara. So where should this money come from?’
 
Even. Agwambo’s MPs are going out to do more maandamano against the hustler. When they are satisfied with a good maandamano job –  well done – they will rush to the bank, to see if their salary has come in. If it is not there, they say, they will do another maandamano, this time because of delayed salaries.  Hospitals want dawa. If dawa is not there, even patients will take time out of hospital beds, to do maandamano.
 
Newspapers also want malipo ya matangazo ya serikali. After saying things like, ‘overburdened tax payer,’ they say, ‘Eh, Owalo, wapi pesa ya matangazo ya serikali?’ Owalo is that digital man, the one with all the Government matangazo and money for matangazo. After watu wa gazeti have done a good protest against taxation, they look Bwana Owalo in the eye and say, ‘You are really delaying with our cash. Our people are dying, Bwana Waziri. We are now rubbing our employees. We are going to rub more people, if you don’t pay us.’
 
Orende has been wondering about these things that he calls ‘contradictions.’ Contradictions? Now that is a good word. Like kwashiorkor! He is even saying that here in Emanyulia when a woman gives birth, she is allowed time to conceive and nurse the conception to maturity. ‘So you, Alubiri son of Omurumba, when a brand new bride comes home, do you expect a brand new baby the next morning, unless there have been some manenos that we don’t understand?
 
‘Do you go to listen at the door, to hear if there is a brand new baby crying behind that door, because a new wife was married yesterday? Come on good people,’ the drinker of cigarettes (as we call him) was saying, ‘There must be time to plough that garden, to sow the seed, to irrigate, and to watch as it matures into a half moon. You don’t just scream around with a sufuria on your head, “Baby, Baby.” Oh, ugali, ugali. The garden must be plowed before it can crop!’
 
And I, Joseph the dreamer of dreams, I am just wondering what it must be like to be the hustler man. Yaani the man who is told, ‘We want money. But he is also told, please stop borrowing! Stop taxing us! But please, please, bring money!’ Eh, me, Joe son of Emanyulia, I don’t want to be the hustler in the Big Hustler House on the Hill. Ah, ah! Let me just continue being raia wa kawaida, waiting for Agwambo’s maandamano to end so that I can go out to forage. Let Bwana Ruto continue being the man, to crack the formula for bringing money to make everyone happy without borrowing or taxation. Eh, Bwana President! Eh! Sasa Omutatah of Busia has taken you to court? Eh? Sasa itakuwa aje?
 
 

The legendary village sage, is a man in turmoil. Waheshimiwa have tied up Orende in circles of money, otherwise known at the Finance Bill. He does not know who is right or wrong in the raging debate, despite being our self-proclaimed wiseman. And he is worried that everyone is pointing guns at waheshimiwa, telling them, ‘Mtaona!’
 
The village thinker has been looking forward to a brand new affordable house. But then he’s been hearing a lot of confusing things about the house. As a matter-of-fact, we are all confused. And, for the first time, even Plato, otherwise known as Orende the Wajackoya-Man, does not know what to believe, or whom to dismiss. Things are elephant here in Emanyulia, the  global headquarters of village wisdom.
 
You see, times were when the hustlers were going about the place, promising other hustlers great things. They said that things would move swiftly from the bottom to the top. Even houses would move from the bottom to the top – that is to say, bottom up economic transformation agenda.
 
Even the poorest hustler would begin living in an affordable house, a real gorofa, at an affordable price. So they made Mister Ruto (Bill) the chief of all hustlers, to bring free houses for those without houses and affordable houses for the rest of us. Then, of course, the man called Agwambo, the impossible man, began causing trouble.
 
Agwambo was saying that our man, Bill, did not win the election. We were very concerned because Agwambo could not tell us how Mister Jose Camargo, whom he said was a friend of Bill and Mr. Wanyonyi Wafula Chebukati, forgot to make the results in Emanyulia Primary School different from those in their computers. So we knew that it was just Agwambo and his sour grapes, saying that our man did not win and going on and on, with bad things about Mister Wanyonyi Wafula wa Chebukati, our own son.
 
We were worried when Mister Agwambo started running in the streets, saying that he was doing a demo – yaani maandamano. But we were relieved that he was just running in Nairobi and Kisumu. Phew! You see, we love peace around here. We were true Nyayo people of love, peace and unity. We have so much love, we even export some of it – to places like there in Nairobi. We can sell surplus love. Willing seller, willing buyer, you see?
 
True that, willing seller, willing buyer. But not so with this housing thing and Finance Bill. They are saying that it is not affordable, even if it is supposed to make homes affordable. Now this is what Orende has been asked to explain, this unaffordable affordable, or affordable unfordable. What is it? How can it be unaffordable, affordable; or affordable, unaffordable. Mister Bill is telling us that it is affordable affordable; and Mister Agwambo is telling us that it is unaffordable, unaffordable. So, some people say; affordable, unaffordable. Others say, unaffordable, affordable. Agwambo says, unaffordable, unaffordable. And Bill says, affordable, affordable.
 
Of course here in Emanyulia we want free houses, not just affordable, affordable, or whatever. But we are asking people to stop pointing guns at each other’s heads and tell us what they mean. You see, we have lived in mud houses since the morning after creation day. Orende was saying that we voted for the hustler so that we can move from these muddy things with grass thatch roofs. Which is a good thing.
 
Even those who brag that they have mabati houses here have only built mgongo punda – this is to say that their two-sided iron roofed houses look like the back of a donkey. We want to move from donkeys  to some proper town stuff. So, someone should tell us the truth about these houses thing, and the Finance thing.
 
For, just when Mr. Ruto (that is to say President Bill) was still telling us about this migration from donkey back to something truly serious, we heard Mister Odinga saying, ‘Punda amechoka.’ Now we don’t know who is tired. Is it the real punda –  that is to say ourselves the people; or is it the small houses that are pretending to be donkeys? Are they tired of us living in them, these punda houses?
 
Some of the people were saying that Mister Odinga was saying something serious. That if they take away all the money – which is like 3 percent of all the money – to build these houses,  that they will become Finance Bill houses. So is this to say that they will belong to Mister Bill or what? This is what Orende cannot explain.
 
What is this Bill thing? Does it mean that we will remain with nothing, like Agwambo is saying, or is it just propaganda? So you see, we are not even sure if it Mister Ruto, or Mister Agwambo who is telling us the truth.
 
You know also, the thing called the cost of living – that is to say ugali kaunga – has become very expensive here in Emanyulia. Your money cannot even buy enough cost of living for your family. You see, long ago, we used to put small-small money in the pocket and go to the market. We came back home with enough cost of living in the basket; sometimes a whole bundle of cost of living.
 
Now you need to put all the money in the basket, and you come back with just a little cost of living that can almost fit in the pocket. Again they are saying – I think it was Mister Riggy G who was saying – that Mister Freedom Uhuru Kenyatta ran away with all the cost of living. That is why we are hungry most of the time, because Mister Freedom took off with everything, and now he is a free man enjoying the cost of living, laughing at us. Someone must explain these things to us.
 
You see,  sometimes we are putting all the money on the wheelbarrow and coming back with just a small cost of living in the pocket. It cannot even make enough cost of living – yaani ugali (obusuma) for all of us. Mister Freedom must come back, to tell us why he ran away to freedom with all our cost of living. He took it to some high Mt. Kenya, we cannot even reach it. That is what he meant when he said he was climbing Mt. Kenya with Agwambo!
 
We want normalcy, which is to say enough cost of living on the table for everybody. We have heard that some people have very heavy cost of living, they cannot even lift it to place it on the table! Ati it is very difficult to place the cost of living on the table? This earth, my brother!
 

 
This article was first published in The Nairobian in 2020, shortly after the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic. The President of the United Republic of Tanzania and Zanzibar, John Magfuli took a curiously dismissive stand, as discussed in this piece.
 
– Barrack, April 2023
 
Adults confound us when they act like children. Perhaps the urge to remain a child, and to behave like, one never goes away. Not even in the ripeness of age. William Wordsworth, the great English romantic poet famously wrote, “The Child is the father of the Man.” The 19^th century lyrical genius concluded, “And I could wish my days to be bound each to each by natural piety.”  
 
Accordingly, you scratch the adult on the surface and you stumble into the child within. Yet, the adult has  a duty to behave his age even if he does not wish to. He has to allow children their childish space. If you are familiar with the Christian writ, you will have read where it is recorded in Matthew 11:31, “To what, then, can I compare the men of this generation? What are they like? They are like children, sitting in the marketplaces. They complain to their playmates, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.”
 
But you will also have read, in 1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I felt like a child, I thought like a child; now that I am a man I have put away childish things.”
 
East Africa’s leaders  bring back these reflections. Where they should act like adults, they behave like children. Nothing  brings out the child within a man as does a moment of crisis. Then people lose the capacity to reason. They can’t stay cool. They are jumpy and easily rattled. They scream when they should emphasize their points. Even in the face of a common enemy, they still want to fight one another.
 
In East Africa, Tanzania’s president, H. E. John Pombe Magfuli, is the pick of the basket. A delicate gentleman, it is difficult to understand how he is a political marvel. President Magfuli can be harsh to alternative thought. Students of political science will want to research on how he has managed to keep bias against alternative opinion and political success in the same pods. They rarely go together – not for long anyway. The Tanzanian head of state and government does not hesitate to clamp down on alternative opinion, even in this season of the dreaded new coronavirus.
 
In recent times a Kenyan media house has been made to repeatedly apologies to President Magfuli and his government. The president  is among a very small class of leaders, alongside Brazil’s Jair   Bolsanaro, who have defied WHO guidelines on the new global pandemic. The offending media house carried a broadcast with the Kiswahili theme, “Ukaidi wa Magfuli.” This has a wide range of possible translations, given the way language behaves.
 
Polysemy is the situation in which one word has several different, but also often related meanings. If you want, you could harp on one word to signify that you have been wronged. For “ukaidi” could be “stubbornness, persistence, independent-mindedness, obduracy, inflexibility,” or whatever. They are all pointers to the unique position that Tanzania has taken on the new bug that has stopped the world.
 
Against the advice of both local and global experts, President Magfuli has dismissed the virus as “much ado about nothing.” Life should go on as usual in his country, he says. He has stopped the initial testing for the virus, as well as reporting of the situation to WHO.  And choices have consequences. One of the consequences is that truck drivers from Tanzania are arriving at the country’s international border exit points with the virus. In the case of the Kenya border at five different locations in Isebania, Taveta, Lungalunga, Namanga and Loitoktok, those with the virus are being sent back to TZ.
 
Now Tanzania responds by banning all movement from Kenya into Tanzania. An irate government official addresses the media and say, “We are going to ban all entry of people and goods from Kenya into Tanzania. In fact we are banning entry from today. No, from now, this very moment! They will not be allowed to come in to bring us their corona.”
 
The new pandemic has limited every country in the world. It easily presents the occasion when both the willing and the reluctant need to follow WHO guidelines. There is no dignity to be lost, even by those who doubted and watched from outside the ring. In a sense, it was not extremely bad that they refused to come along with everyone else. Callous as it sounds, they have given the world the other side of the coin. After an extended period of not testing or reporting to WHO, Tanzania could still help East Africans a great deal, by now presenting a truthful picture of the situation in the country.
 
President Magfuli should not be ridiculed for having taken an independent stand from the rest of the world. Nor should we hold it against him that – together with Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi – he spurned a video teleconference by regional leaders, on the virus. It is a learning world. And great men become greater still when they learn something new, especially from their mistakes.
 
President Magfuli can learn something new from how his counterparts have dealt with covid-19. And they, too, could learn something from Tanzania – regardless that the lesson may be on “how not to manage global pandemics.” Unfortunately angry and ridiculous words about each other at the very top cast the regional leadership in the mould of kids mocking each other in the marketplace.
 
Entry and exit points at the border can be managed more efficiently, for the benefit of all concerned. The entire regional economy depends hugely on regional trade. The emerging situation between Kenya and Tanzania is not in anyone’s interest. Kenya must resist the temptation to escalate the situation by hitting back. For his part, President Magfuli needs kulegeza Kamba kidogo. Aturuhusu watu kumkosoa bila kuwanyorosha.
 
What every leader should know is that we in the media mean well, in our criticism of their performance. There is no borderline between criticism and appreciation. Our criticism of the leadership is our appreciation of their tour of duty. Allow us to talk to you without asking for unnecessary apology and threatening to “nyorosha” us. We are your partners. The work we do is for our collective good. Meanwhile, let maturity reign in East Africa. Utoto na kiburi havitatusaidia.

This piece was first published in The Standard on Saturday 14 September 2014. It speaks of the hopelessness of an African nation that is led by people who have no faith in the institutions that they build and lead. They build schools and head Ministries of Education, but send their children to foreign schools, or schools based on foreign curricula. Ministers of Health are not treated in the public hospitals that they head. Heads of State and Government are flown out of their countries for healthcare and often return as frozen cargo. It is difficult to understand why Africans accept this absurdity.
 
 – Barrack
The ultimate humiliation for an entire continent is when a former head of state returns home as frozen air cargo. Africa is a continent with fifty-plus countries, each parading its sovereignty. Yet none has a facility in which the nation’s chief sovereign can receive healthcare. You will hear every so often that a head of state is in London, Brussels, Paris – or even in tiny landlocked Luxembourg “for routine medical check up.”
 
Robert Mugabe – Africa’s longest serving strongman – becomes only the latest statistic. African leaders don’t die in their countries. That is unless, of course, they are assassinated, or die in some freaky circumstances. It is easier to mention odd cases, like Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, who died in State House Mombasa 41 years ago. Medical experts will tell you, however, that they had advised Mzee against the wisdom of air travel. Hence, instead of flying out, he flew in foreign doctors – like Christian Bernard of South Africa, who attended to him in his last days.
 
The question may be asked, when African leaders go to foreign countries for medical check up, where do they expect their citizens to go? Who should put up good facilities that our leaders can trust? You will want to tell me that Mugabe died in exile in Asia. You can tell that to your goats. Two years ago, this column laughed off the so-called “coup de tat” in Zimbabwe. When a man’s cronies abort a popular revolution by changing guards, you don’t call that a “coup de tat.” That is a game of minds. In the end, the doubting Thomas can now see that nothing changed in Harare. The custodians of the bad old order only changed guards.
 
Let us, therefore, ask the question again; when African leaders go to die in Europe, America, Canada and Australia, what should happen to the miserable slum dwellers they lord over? For, the entire continent is one massive slum. Even our so-called capital cities are nothing more than giant slums. The world must laugh at us whenever it comes visiting. The culture shock begins right at our “international airports,” virtually each of which has been named for some president or prime minister. It moves on to our dilapidated pot-holed roads, also named after them and their families. The potholes go all the way to our most “exclusive and salubrious” residential areas in our “capital cities.”
 
The shock moves on to our non-functional streetlights and dark alleys in the “city centres.” It goes on to our burst sewers and dry taps. In the “capital cities” water merchants make a kill with their bowsers of “clean water.” You move on to poisoned filthy rivers in the “city,” carrying heavy metals, sewage, domestic waste, aborted fetuses, and just about every kind of junk and toxin you could think of.
 
This is Africa. The story is the same everywhere, almost without exception. You could be in Otta in Nigeria, or in Mulago in Kampala; or you may be in Libreville, Gabon. It does not matter. The smell of sewage wrestles with that of cooking food, commercial sex and rotting garbage. Odoriferous dead dogs wrestle with putrid dead cats and rats – and other anonymous dead stuff. Amidst all this, someone calls himself a head of state. And he has a Cabinet calling him “Your Excellency.”
 
When His Excellency gets a simple pimple, he jets himself to Europe. Every so often, like Sekou Toure, the tour ends in frozen cargo. Umar Yar’Dua, Levi Mwanawasa, Michael Sata, Kamuzu Banda, Meles Zenawi, Omar Bongo, and dozens of others, they return as cold air cargo. Ivory Coast’s Felix Houphouet Boigny is urgently flown back from Paris to try to die at home. The objective is in fact to sign off his ill-gotten wealth. As soon as this is done, he is removed from the life supporting machines.
 
State failure does not get worse. Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart in Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding A Fractured World give us an astute snapshot of the failed state. The two scholars remind us that the function of the state is provision of basic opportunities to citizens. Among these are security, health and nutrition, shelter and education. A state whose leaders are medical tourists should be modest in proclamation of such lofty notions as sovereignty. What is the worth of such sovereignty, if any? Indeed, are some of our states non-states?
 
Africa excels in systemic corruption. Our reptiles that die in Europe and Asia have grabbed everything. Ghani and Lockhart remind us, “The common people of failing states have no real stake in the success or failure of their countries. They are not ‘stakeholders’ in that they have no legal title to whatever they possess, no guarantees against its expropriation at any time, and no real belief that the conditions they face will ever improve.”
 
In Nairobi, we have only this week seen the home of 75-year-old widow being brought down by faceless masters of impunity. The unknown characters have begun building on the site where her home once stood. The site is guarded by crude-weapon-brandishing goons. The police can do nothing about it. This scene replays itself across Kenya and the rest of Africa.
 
To sum up Ghani and Lockhart, “Africans have no stake in their present since they are totally disenfranchised. They have no stake in the past since it is being stolen from them. Their heritage is destroyed and their needs of subsistence and lack of education prevent appreciation for their past. Finally, they have no stake in the future since they see no evidence that the state is bettering their lot. There is nothing to motivate them, except the imperatives of simple survival.”
 
The citizens must ask themselves a simple question, “Why do we allow this abuse and misrule?”