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Kenya
Clearing the deck, and the forest
Mar 29th 2001 | NAIROBI
From The Economist print edition
The Kenyan regime's
destructive policies
"IN AFRICA we gonna get it on, cause we don't get along,"
said Muhammad Ali, off to a rumble in the jungle with George
Foreman back in 1974. Daniel arap Moi and Richard Leakey have been
boxing for years. But the president won the latest round this week
when he sacked his old adversary from his post as head of the
civil service, together with most of his team. Mr Leakey's brief
for the past 20 months has been to streamline the service and
restructure the economy. Unlike Mr Moi's usual band of sycophants,
Mr Leakey had a reputation for integrity. Thus his appointment was
a bid by the president to get the IMF and the World Bank back to
Kenya after three years away.
It worked well at first. Mr Leakey sacked a string of corrupt
officials. The IMF and the World Bank promised loans of $250m. Mr
Moi said he was pleased with the man he had called an antichrist
and an atheist colonialist during two election battles. But late
last year the cracks appeared. Mr Leakey had managed to axe 25,000
dead-wood public servants, beneficiaries of the ruling Kenya
African National Union's patronage. But his next 6,000 lay-offs
were frozen by the courts.
Mr Leakey's retrenchment programme remains frozen. So too, and not
coincidentally, are the IMF and World Bank loans. The second
tranche of lending is almost five months overdue. Mr Moi's defiant
sacking of the Leakey team could be decisive. On the other hand,
there will be reluctance to desert Kenya less than two years from
an election which, if the constitution means anything, will end
the president's 24-year-old regime.
In any event, Mr Leakey's time was already up. The pretence that
he would be allowed to reform a system carefully designed to keep
Mr Moi's hands on the reins of power, and on the purse-strings,
was gone before he was dismissed. But Leakey-watchers had expected
him to engineer a more glorious exit. Instead, he leaves somewhat
tainted. For instance, it was recently revealed that he had warned
the attorney-general off investigating the seizure of a
privately-owned flower firm by Kenyan officials of a Dutch bank,
on grounds of vaguely phrased considerations of "national
interest".
Mr Leakey's last act as head of the Kenya Wildlife Service in 1998
was to prevent the government clearing swathes of Mount Kenya's
forests. He could not do much about this during his stint inside
the system. But now he is a free man again, he may return to the
issue. This would be timely: another 10% of Kenya's remaining
forests, or 67,000 hectares (165,000 acres), is about to be
parcelled out.
Mr Moi's environment minister says that since the land is already
occupied by squatters, the aim is to redefine the borders and
prevent further encroachment. But aerial photographs show that
over half the earmarked forest is unoccupied, much of it immature
plantation paid for with World Bank loans. Protesters accuse Mr
Moi of giving away national assets to buy the votes his party will
need if his personal empire is to survive the succession.
He has done it before. According to environmental sources, he
handed out 700 title deeds to forest land two weeks before the
1997 election. But the current proposal would be the single
biggest excision in Kenya's history. After three years of drought,
it could be environmental suicide.
Mostly semi-arid, arid or desert, the country depends for its
water on scattered catchments in highland areas. Forests regulate
the water supply, sponging it up when it rains and releasing it
when it is dry. Removing them causes extremes of flooding and
drought. Already the once-perennial Njoro river, flowing from the
Mau forest into Lake Nakuru--where many of the world's flamingos
live--is dry for seven months of the year. Illegal logging in the
Mau is the cause, and now 15% of it is for the chop.
A little-known group in Mr Moi's hometown of Eldoret has won a
temporary injunction. Though this has not deterred the
government's surveyors, a much bigger legal challenge being
launched early next week may have more success. Over a dozen
environmental groups are to unite with Kenya's churches to
challenge the decree as a contravention of a recent environmental
law, and as a denial of people's right to water.
Legal experts claim that their case is so strong that it will be
difficult for even Mr Moi's most grateful judges to deny. The
president may find that dealing with Kenya's newly organised
"civil society" is trickier than sacking an antagonistic
civil servant.
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