Looming threat of food riots an indictment on leadership

By Ababu Namwamba

Harry S. Truman, the 33rd President of the United States, famously displayed on his desk a plaque inscribed with the eternal words: “The buck stops here”. It was a testament both to confident leadership and to bold acknowledgement of responsibility by a leader well at ease behind the wheels of power.

Sift through the sands of time, and you will not encounter many leaders who have been that eager to accept “the buck”, especially when the chips are down! In Kenya, it is much more commonplace for leaders to eagerly claim glory, even where no effort has been sown, than to humbly accept responsibility, even where circumstances glaringly demand so. It is a mindset best captured in this Indra Gandhi gem: “My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group. There is much less competition!”

Kenyans are suffering. Painfully. From all points of the compass, you hear depressing groans of misery and disillusionment. The cost of living is spiraling out of control. Our roads have become terrifying deathtraps. Insecurity remains a mortal challenge to settled existence.

And where are the country’s leaders on both sides of the political isle? Ah! They are engrossed in the more important affair of feuding over a referendum. They are busy with the grave business of annulling irritating international obligations. Their energies are consumed by the thrill of flexing political muscle.

It is sickening!

Are we waiting for a tempestuous unga revolution before we wake up from these juvenile foibles and petty power plays? What are ordinary Kenyans supposed to do when none other than the Treasury chief himself meekly “pleads” with larcenous traders to stop stealing from Kenyans through misapplication of the controversial new VAT law? For goodness sake, Bwana Cabinet Secretary, you have the whip, crack it!

As the prospect of food riots looms large, what is particularly galling is that the issues are nothing new. It is just a manifestation of the usual cavalier attitude. As I write this from Arusha, I’m aware that we are faced with another grain crisis. Kenya has two major “maize belts” — Kilgoris-Bomet-Kisii-Kehancha that harvests in July/September and Bungoma-TransNzoia-Uasin Gishu whose harvest is in the last quarter of the year. Both belts are not looking very promising, the primary reason being poor support to farmers, in the supply of farm inputs like fertiliser.

Meanwhile, the crisis-hit National Cereals and Produce Board has only two million bags of strategic grain reserve. Yet government is not showing any signs of action before this dark cloud breaks into a typhoon. Alan Lakein says that planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now. Indeed it is universally agreed that failing to plan is planning to fail! I do recall that three years ago, I chaired the Parliamentary Select Committee on Cost of Living to respond to a crisis as the one looming over the horizon. The historic committee presented a comprehensive report to Parliament; and conveyed the same to government at two high-level meetings with teams of top aficionados, one of key Permanent Secretaries led by then Cabinet Secretary Francis Muthaura and line ministries led by then Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

That report was the culmination of intense consultations we held with stakeholders in the key sectors of agriculture, energy, finance and transport. We also organised open public hearings in various parts of the country. In all the places the Committee interacted with Kenyans ­— one strong message was consistent: the citizenry were literally panting under the unbearable yoke of the cost of essentials of life that had spiraled well beyond their reach.  And Kenyans laid their tribulations squarely in the lap of leaders, who they believed to be insensitive, unresponsive and obsessed with games of political brinkmanship as hunger pangs ravage children, women and men across the length and breadth of the country.

Now as then, Kenyans feel neglected and shunned by a leadership insulated from their grim reality. Farmers feel abandoned to the mercy of brutal profiteers, while transporters are exposed to leecherous wheeler-dealing cartels in the energy sector, amidst widespread concern about corruption rings that continue to infest all spheres.

All leaders in this country better know that doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results is what is called madness! We must not only change course, but also learn not to mistake motion for action, as Ernest Hemingway would poetically put it.

We have repeatedly disappointed Kenyans, and perhaps seismic food riots might just be the sting to wake us all from deep slumber!

Writer is Budalang’i MP, and Chair of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee