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Must Read: Deadly Wizardry:
Poverty in Kenya
by Silvano Borruso
06. Feb. 2008
Extortion
Last year’s take for the Nairobi Agricultural Show was a discreet
17 million Kenya shillings (exchange rate approx. 70 shillings to
the dollar). The Show officials had already planned how to spend
the money, when a message came from on high peremptorily demanding
9 million cash. Such messages cannot be ignored, sidetracked or
answered negatively. The officials complied, and not a word
reached the press.
The nightmarish system of licensing for the most innocuous
economic enterprise can have a rather paralysing effect on
operations of a certain magnitude. But it can be bypassed, at a
price. A telephone call to a certain well-oiled gentleman, who
takes a cut of anything, between 10 and 30 per cent of the value
of whatever it is, quickly ensures the start of a new industry,
the securing of an import or export licence or whatever.
The foregoing examples of extortion, multiplied all across the
nation, give an idea of the heavy handicaps under which the
development of a country as full of potential as Kenya labours.
The slightest economic success is invariably accompanied by
demands for percentages by powerful individuals. Dire consequences
are in store for anyone rash enough to say no.
Land
The Ogiek are (or were until recently) a forest-dwelling,
self-supporting tribe living in an area well out of the way. They
only asked to be left alone. In a classical example easily
predicted by Georgist economists, their land suddenly acquired
value when a new road was routed close to where they live.
Attempts at land grabbing were immediate and threatening. The
judiciary, nominally independent but de facto obeying orders, were
unable to stop the powerful from dispossessing the Ogiek. The
Ogiek lost the case. They have appealed. The issue is still in the
courts, but the outcome is a foregone one.
On a different occasion another powerful tycoon eyed a piece of
land for one of his operations. He offered a price to the people
living on it, but they were unimpressed. They would not have
accepted even ten times the price, for they had no intention of
selling their ancestral land to anyone. The tycoon summoned a
contingent of armed APs (Administration Police) who promptly
arrested the chief and a few representative of the community.
After a year in jail the tycoon repeated his request and forced
the sale of the land.
The land question in Kenya still labours under the British
colonial legacy. They brought here the institution of the title
deed, which has had in Africa the same deadly effect it has had in
Britain since Henry VIII’s time.
But ownership of land does not necessarily have the salutary
effect
Henry George had predicted. Bad laws prevent farmers from
enjoying the fruit of their labour. The Agricultural Boards,
another British legacy, are institutions run at their beginning by
the (settler) farmers themselves.
After independence the boards were nationalised, little by little
tightening the noose round the (African) farmers’ neck. Payments
were increasingly delayed, at times by years. Free movement of
produce was restricted, but lifted upon request by the
International Monetary Fund and World Bank (IMF/WB). The lifting,
though, is nominal. A police road block will demand to see “the
licence,” and if the driver objects that it is no longer required,
he will be held long enough to ruin the fresh produce he is
transporting unless, of course, he is willing to bribe. As a
result, the owner of a 60-acre farm-cum-stone house, unable to
make ends meet, finds employment in Nairobi as a driver; another,
as a small-scale usurer; a third, as a high school factotum (for
25 years). The list could continue, but the examples give a good
idea.
Debt and Liquidity
A further reason why land ownership and farming are not as
productive as they could be is the dearth of liquidity due to the
policy of IMF/WB. For reasons never explained, the shilling was
“pegged” to the dollar some thirty years ago. As a result, Kenya
can only issue money according to the amount of dollars it holds,
and not according to the needs of its economy. On top of that,
every Budget sees the disappearance of billions of shillings from
the taxpayer’s wages into the maw of debt repayment, which makes
it impossible to maintain the existing infrastructure, let alone
build new infrastructure. The State has crowded out ordinary
investors from the financial market, where the interest rate has
stood at more than 20% for the past fifteen years. One of the
results of this policy has been the inexorable shrinking of the
real economy, killing any hope of industrialisation by 2020 as
hoped for by utopian planners.
The dearth of liquidity is especially crippling in the rural areas
where most of the population live. In desperation, they come to
crowd the slums around Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu, the three
largest towns. The availability of cash is the main reason for
chaotic urbanisation: Nairobi passed from 0.5 million people in
1960 to more than 3 million today.
Representation
The inadequacy of political representation, not to say the lack of
it, is largely due to the misconception, cherished by an erstwhile
US ambassador, that the institution of the political party has
been as good for Africa as for America. Its imposition on Kenya
has been lethal in the literal sense of the word.
In Kenya no political party has anything like a programme: the
leader says “I want to be President” and that is that. His (or her
in one case) tribesmates vote for him regardless. The bigger the
tribe the more votes he gets. Naturally the incumbent considers
voting against him as an act of war, and punishes the opposition
tribes accordingly: systematic disruption of rallies by brute
force, so-called “clashes” (in reality armed raids by well trained
paramilitary personnel), utter neglect of infrastructure,
destruction of the existing ones, like sending bulldozers to strip
tarmac off roads, etc. Some 20-30,000 people have lost their lives
in the last decade of the 20th century following the siren song of
the party system.
Conclusion
If it could be reduced to one sentence, the unwillingness (or
inability, or both) to see the African social reality as it is,
both from inside and outside, is the root cause of African social
disorder, with the concomitant distorted image of Africa that
Europe and America have. Living among the African people is
another story and another experience, which maybe time and space
will allow some day.
SILVANO BORRUSO LIVES IN KENYA
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