June 2005

The full transcript of GWB’s Fort Bragg speech on Iraq follows.

MC: Ladies and gentlemen the President of the United States.
W: Good evening. I am bila clue. Thank you.

Isn’t it irritating how every story about Kenya in the international media these days seems to begin with the words, “Kibera, Africa’s biggest slum with 2 million people, is located in the heart of Nairobi”. I wonder what the Professor of Politics would say about all the press his “hood” is getting. Since I lived next door in Ngummo for a lifetime, Kibera was a place for cheaper haircuts that Kenmat, cheaper Juakali than Kenmat, and was best avoided at night. Although the scariest bunch of people to bump into at night were not the local thugs, but the Utumishi kwa Wote. Especially if you didn’t have your id. What happened to their website by the way?

Is there anything more passionate than the Venus Williams-Maria Sharapova battle going on this summer? Those who feel that sweating blood and guts and fighting for each point are the reserve of male sports should get a tape of today’s Wimbledon semi final. I feel like I’ve ran a marathon.

For information on Kenyan elections and Kenyan parliamentary constituencies check out the Institute for Education in Democracy. These people know what they are talking about (and they helped me with research on my dissertation back in the day )

Thanks to DMKW who sent me an email that reminded me of this link

All across the kingdom, the news travelled quickly that the Queen’s bell-ringer, who faithfully served the royal family for decades, had passed. The Queen made the royal decree that she was looking for someone to come and take his place.

The next day, a humble peasant was first in the long line of applicants for the job. “My Queen,” he entreated her, “since I was a youth, I have always wanted to serve our kingdom and the royal family in this way. Let me be your bell-ringer and I will serve in earnest all the days of my life.”

The Queen appreciated the peasant’s words, but was puzzled. “My humble servant, I have but one question: how can you serve the kingdom as the royal bell-ringer? You don’t have any arms!”

The peasant smiled and said simply, “Take me to the tower and I will show you.”

The Queen, her entourage, and the peasant climbed the steps of the bell tower until they reached the top. The peasant looked over his shoulder at the queen, “Behold!” And with that, the peasant ran to the far side of the room, spun around and ran directly at the bell. Faster and faster he ran then leapt, flew through the air, and “WHAM!” hit the bell full-force with his face.

Stunned, the Queen hesitated. But, when she heard the bell peal as never before, she told the peasant, “The position is yours.”

Weeks went by as the peasant served faithfully and punctually, and always in the same way: he would run across the room, spin around, and charge directly at the bell, leap, and “WHAM!” hit the bell full-force with his face.

Until, that is, one fateful morning when the peasant woke up late. Certain he could still make it in time; he ran from his common home, tore across the kingdom, scrambled up the tower, across the room, spun, leapt and - missed the bell entirely! He instead flew across the room, out the nearby window and plummeted a thousand feet to his death.

Having heard the commotion, the castle guards ran upstairs to find the empty room. They looked out the window to find a crowd gathering around the peasant’s body. The one guard looks at each other and says, “My God that poor man! Have you any idea who he is?”

The other :

(wait for it!)

“I don’t know, but his face rings a bell.”

The statement I find most irritating by former colonialists is:

“At least we built railways, hospitals and schools.”

At least you did what?

That’s like a drunk driver telling a person he has just knocked down and put in hospital,
“Cheer up; at least I wasn’t driving a bus.”

Leave alone the assumption that we would not have built schools or hospitals ourselves, they make it sound like ati it was a favour.

I sat in seminar where someone said,

“It is obvious that the single most important event of the 20th century was the holocaust.”

I had to stop him right there.
The single most important event to his community may have been the holocaust. To Africa however, colonisation and decolonisation are much more important in my opinion. What would you say the single most important event of the 20th century was for Africa/Kenya?

That I am no fan of Mugabe is not news. I think the man is a disaster for Zimbabwe. I am not going to go through all the reasons. That’s been done before and if you want live updates of what life in Zimbabwe is really like check out the Sokwanele blog.

In the UK there two things you are guaranteed to come across in the press everyday. One is World War II. These guys just can not get over the fact that they defeated Hitler’s Germany and act like they did it themselves. It is disturbing to find that nearly every reference to Germany or Germans carries a Third Reich connotation. For example newspapers reported the election of the “Panzer Cardinal” to the papacy earlier this year.

The second issue you encounter on a daily basis in the UK press is Zimbabwe or more specifically Mugabe. Mugabe this, Mugabe that. It has become an obsession. Columnists who are normally balanced and sane come out with ridiculous statements like, “Mugabe is the world’s most evil dictator” or “Mugabe runs the worst regime”. The man doesn’t even run the worst regime in Africa for crying out loud. The latest tactic is to combine these two obsessions, World War II and Zimbabwe, as now Mugabe is called the “new Hitler.”

If it were not for the plight of the white farmers the west would not care about Zimbabwe. Or at the very least the western press would not care. It is as simple as that. A couple of years ago, Zimbabwe was front-page news: white farmers were being kicked off their land; there were beatings and deaths. British TV and newspapers told their stories, their names, and their backgrounds. There were photographs of the wives left behind, the children who’d been orphaned. Over the same period around 200 black Zimbabweans were also killed by the farm invasion mobs. According to Wilf Mbanga, the exiled Zimbabwean journalist and publisher of The Zimbabwean, not one of their names was printed in a British newspaper. Yet they talk about humanitarian and human rights. This blatant dishonesty plays straight in Mugabe’s hands and he is able to stand up and play the African statesman by say things like, “We have not asked for any inch of Europe or any square inch of that territory so, Blair, keep your England and let me keep my Zimbabwe.”

As an African this is the problem with Zimbabwe. Do you join the chorus speaking out against the tyrant and thus become bed fellows with an unpleasant bunch who think colonisation was the best thing to happen to Africa, or do you stand up for Mugabe, tell the west to stay the hell out of Zimbabwe and her affairs?

I have been accused of over saying this but it has to be repeated. The west will always act in its own best interest. That should be obvious to all of us and frankly should not be unexpected. Everyone acts in their own self interest. To expand on that, the west will never do anything to help us unless it also helps them. NEVER. Tony Blair’s African Commission, NEPAD, etc all these initiatives benefit the west. This does not mean that they are bad for Africa. Initiatives can be mutually beneficial. Once you understand that, that the west is looking out for itself, then you can change focus and start concentrating on what benefits us, Africa, as a continent regardless of what the rest of the world thinks. In other words we have to become as selfish as them to survive.

This is how I apply it to Zimbabwe. Mugabe is an enemy of the Zimbabwe wanainchi. He is running their country down, he has destroyed their economy, he uses food, medicine and starvation as political tools, he employs political violence and he is killing his own people. The Zimbabwe wanainchi are my brothers and sisters, therefore what is bad for them is bad for me. So what if unpleasant, irritating, ill informed, biased and even racist white and black people are also against him? That does not make me like them. And to put it even more bluntly, it takes more than kicking out a few white farmers and making white Britain angry to become an African hero in my eyes. Are we really going to move the bar of our expectations of our leaders to that low level? Ati you kill jungus and piss of Blair so you are a good guy? Not me, thanks.

We have to remain vigilant however. There are many who claim to be on our side but are obviously not. Beware the wolves in sheep clothing and all that.

On a more personal note. Why is it that the most anti-Moi, the most anti-Kanu Kenyans are the same people who turn around and support Mugabe? How can you hate Moi for being a dictator and totalitarian, an abuser of power, an enemy of the people and then turn around and praise Mugabe with your next breath? You meet people who would put their lives on the line to fight for Kenyan democracy, yet would also put their lives on the line to support Mugabe. Are we really that arrogant? That what we want for ourselves, a free and fair society, we would deny to Zimbabweans just to make a political point?