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Xenophobia in South Africa: A Consequence of the Unfinished Business of Decolonisation in Africa
8 min read. The recent Afrophobic attacks in South Africa are symptoms of a deeper problem that has its roots in the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885.
South Africa has consistently experienced cyclical xenophobic flaring that has dented its image in Africa and in the world. The country continues to receive a high number of both documented and undocumented migrants as it has become a top destination in South-to- South migration. Beyond its geographical proximity to other African states, the current migration patterns have to be understood as a consequence of history and as such the xenophobic flaring has to be read as an unfinished business of decolonisation in Africa.
History created two processes that shaped Africa's politics and economies, even up to today, creating a complex conundrum for our policy makers. Firstly, the Berlin conference created artificial borders and nations that remain problematic today. These borders were not fashioned to address the political and economic interests of Africans but the imperial powers of Europe. Institutions and infrastructure were created to service the imperial interests, and this remains the status quo despite more than four decades of independence in Africa. Secondly, Cecil John Rhodes' dream of "Cape to Cairo" became the basis upon which the modern economy was built in Africa. This created what the late Malawian political economist, Guy Mhone, called an enclave economy of prosperity amidst poverty, and resultantly created what Mahmood Mamdani termed the bifurcated state, with citizens and subjects.
A closer look at the African state's formation history provides insights on the continuities of colonial institutions and continuous marginalisation of Africans as the state was never fashioned to address their political and economic interests from the beginning.
Drawing on classical African political economists, this article argues that, unknowingly, the South African government and in particular, the African National Congress (ANC) leadership, a former liberation movement, have fallen into the trap of the logic of the underlying colonial epistemologies informing migration debates in Africa. The Afrophobic attacks in South Africa fly in the face of Africa's founding fathers, such as Nkrumah, Nyerere, Machel, Kaunda and Mandela, and of the African Union's dream of a borderless African economy and society.
In his essay "In Defence of History", Professor Hobsbawm challenges us to read history in its totality:
However, the new perspectives on history should also return us to that essential, if never quite realisable, objective of those who study the past: "total history". Not a "history of everything", but history as an indivisible web in which all human activities are interconnected.
It is when we read history in its totality that we are able to make connections about the relations between the past, present and future. Looked at closely, the current xeno/Afro-phobia insurrections engulfing South Africa have to be read within the totality of history. Therefore, this piece argues that the xeno/Afro-phobia flarings that have been gripping South Africa ever since 2008, and which have cast South Africa it in bad light within the African continent, are contrary to the ethos of Pan-Africanism and are largely a product of the history of the scramble and partition of Africa at the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885.
Whose borders? Remembering the Ghosts of Berlin
By the beginning of the 1870s, European nations were in search of natural resources to grow their industries and at the same expand markets for their products. This prompted strong conflict amongst European superpowers and in late 1884, Otto von Bismarck, the then German Chancellor, called for a meeting in Berlin of various representatives of European nations. The objective was to agree on "common policy for colonisation and trade in Africa and the drawing of colonial state boundaries in the official partition of Africa".
The xenophobic/Afrophobic attacks in South Africa fly in the face of Africa's founding fathers, such as Nkrumah, Nyerere, Machel, Kaunda and Mandela, and of the African Union's dream of a borderless African economy and society.
At the end of the Berlin Conference, the "European powers had neatly divided Africa up amongst themselves, drawing the boundaries of Africa much as we know them today". It was at this conference that European superpowers set in motion a process that set boundaries that have continued to shape present-day Africa. Remember that there was no King Shaka, Lobengula, Munhumutapa, Queen Nzinga, Emperor Haile Selassie, Litunga of Barotseland among many other rulers of Africa at this conference. There was Otto von Bismarck, King Leopold II and their fellow European rulers who sat down and determined borders governing Africa today.
This is the epistemological base upon which current "othering" within citizenship and migration policies are hinged. This colonial legacy has its roots in the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, where major European powers partitioned Africa amongst themselves and formalised it with the current borders that have largely remained intact and the basis of the modern state in post-colonial Africa. Therefore, policies on identity, citizenship and migration in Africa have been largely informed by modern nation-state forms of territoriality drawn from remnants of colonial policies. These have tended to favour the elites and modernised (privileged, intelligentsia, government officials and business) at the expense of the underclass in Africa, who form the majority.
Most of the institutions and policies characterising the post-colonial African state are bequeathed by legacies of colonialism, hence the need for African states to listen to the wisdom of Samir Amin and "delink from the past" or bridge Thabo Mbeki's "two nations" thesis and create a decolonised Africa where Africans will be no strangers.
Africa's citizenship and migration policies remain unreformed and informed by colonial epistemology and logics. The partitioning of Africa into various territories for European powers at the Berlin Conference means most of the present-day nation-states and boundaries in Africa are a product of the resultant imperialist agreement. The boundaries were an outside imposition and split many communities with linguistic, cultural and economic ties together. The nation-state in Africa became subjugated by colonial powers (exogenous forces) rather than natural processes of endogenous force contestations and nation-state formation, as was the case with Europe.
Stoking the flames
African communities are burning from Afrophobia/xenophobia, and at times this is sparked by Africa's elites who make reckless statements based on the logics of the Berlin Conference. Africa's poor or the underclass are the most affected, as these xeno-insurrections manifest physically and violently amongst poor communities. Among elite communities, it manifests mostly in subtle psychological forms.
South African leaders continue to be oblivious to the crisis at hand and fail to understand that the solution to the economic crisis and depravity facing the South African citizenry can't easily be addressed by kicking out foreigners. In 2014, prominent Zulu King Goodwill Zwelthini had this to say and the whole country was caught up in flames:
Most government leaders do not want to speak out on this matter because they are scared of losing votes. As the king of the Zulu nation, I cannot tolerate a situation where we are being led by leaders with no views whatsoever…We are requesting those who come from outside to please go back to their countries…The fact that there were countries that played a role in the country's struggle for liberation should not be used as an excuse to create a situation where foreigners are allowed to inconvenience locals.
After a public outrage he claimed to have been misquoted and the South African Human Rights Council became complicit when it absolved him.
Towards the South African 2019 elections, President Cyril Ramaphosa also jumped onto the blame-the-foreigner bandwagon by stoking xenophobic flames when he said that "everybody just comes into our country…" Not to be outdone, Johannesburg Mayor, Herman Mashaba, has been on the blaze, blaming foreigners for the rise in crime and overcrowded service delivery.
On the other hand, Minister Bheki Cele continues to be in denial as he adamantly characterises the current attack on foreigners as acts of criminality and not xenophobia. Almost across the political divide there is consensus that foreigners are a problem in South Africa. However, the exception has been the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) that has been steadfastly condemning the black-on-black attacks and has characterised them as self-hate.
Whither the Pan-African dream?
In his founding speech for Ghana's independence, Kwame Nkrumah said, "We again rededicate ourselves in the struggle to emancipate other countries in Africa; for our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent."
This speech by President Nkrumah set the basis upon which Ghana and some of the other independent African states sought to ensure the liberation of colonised African states. They never considered themselves free until other Africans were freed from colonialism and apartheid. Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere had this to say:
I reject the glorification of the nation-state [that] we inherited from colonialism, and the artificial nations we are trying to forge from that inheritance. We are all Africans trying very hard to be Ghanaians or Tanzanians. Fortunately for Africa, we have not been completely successful. The outside world hardly recognises our Ghanaian-ness or Tanzanian-ness. What the outside world recognises about us is our African-ness.
It is against this background that countries like Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa benefitted from the solidarity of their African brothers as they waged wars of liberation. Umkhonto weSizwe, the African National Congress' armed wing, fought alongside the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army to dislodge white supremacist in Southern Rhodesia. And Nigeria set up the Southern Africa Relief Fund that raised $10 million that benefitted South Africans fighting against the apartheid regime. The African National Congress was housed in neighbouring African countries, the so-called frontline states of Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Lesotho and Tanzania. In some cases, these countries had to endure bombings and raids by the apartheid regime.
African communities are burning from Afrophobia/xenophobia, and at times this is sparked by Africa's elites who make reckless statements based on the logics of the Berlin Conference.
The attacks on foreign nationals who are mostly African and black by black South Africans and the denial by South African government officials that the attacks are not xenophobic but criminal are attempts to duck a glaring problem that needs urgent attention. It is this denialism from authorities that casts aspersions on the Pan-African dream of a One Africa.
Glimmers of hope
All hope is not lost, as there are still voices of reason in South Africa that understand that the problem is a complex and economic one. The EFF has also managed to show deep understanding that the problem of depravity and underdevelopment of Black South Africans is not caused by fellow Africans but by the skewed economic system. Its leader, Julius Malema, tweeted amidst the flaring of the September 2019 xenophobia storm:
Our anger is directed at wrong people. Like all of us, our African brothers and sisters are selling their cheap labour for survival. The owners of our wealth is white monopoly capital; they are refusing to share it with us and the ruling party #ANC protects them. #OneAfricaIsPossible.
Yet, if policy authorities and South Africa's elites would dare to revisit the Pan-African dream as articulated by the EFF Commander-in-Chief Julius Malema, they may be able to exorcise the Ghosts of Berlin.
Signs of integration are appearing, albeit slowly. East African countries have opened their borders to each other and allow free movement of people without the need for a visa. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has even gone further to allow people from Tanzania and Uganda to work and live in Kenya without the need for a visa. In addition, Rwanda and Tanzania have abolished work permit fees for any national of the East African Community. Slowly, the Ghosts of Berlin are disappearing, but more work still needs to be done to hasten the process. The launch of the African Union passport and African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) offers further hope of dismantling the borders of the Berlin Conference. South African authorities need to look seriously into East Africa and see how they can re-imagine their economy.
Towards the South African 2019 elections, President Cyril Ramaphosa also jumped onto the blame-the-foreigner bandwagon by stoking xenophobic flames when he said that "everybody just comes into our country…"
The continuous flow of African migrants into South Africa is no accident but a matter of an economic history question. Blaming the foreigner, who is an easy target, becomes a simple solution to a complex problem, and in this case Amilcar Cabral's advice "Claim no easy victories" is instructive. There is the need re-imagine a new development paradigm in South Africa and Southern Africa in general to address questions of structural inequalities and underdevelopment, if the tide of migration to Egoli (City of Gold) – read South Africa- is to be tamed. The butchering of Africans without addressing the enclavity of the African economy will remain palliative and temporary. The current modes of development at the Southern African level favour the growth of South African corporates and thus perpetuate the discourse of enclavity, consequently reinforcing colonial and apartheid labour migration patterns.
Moving On or Business as Usual? Contemplating a Post-Museveni Uganda
9 min read. Is the West's renewed interest in promoting human rights in Uganda a genuine attempt at bringing about democracy and eliminating corruption, or is it based on the commercial interests of a superpower intent on reducing China's influence in Africa?
The Western media is taking notice of growing agitation for regime change in Uganda at a level comparable to the 1980s when Yoweri Museveni was referred to as a "a young handsome guerilla" on ITV News and featured in a British documentary filmed in the Luwero Triangle. Even as the then President Milton Obote was denying the existence of a rebel threat in Uganda, British journalist William Pike was interviewing Museveni in the bush. Pike later became a mobiliser for international support for the National Resistance Army (NRA) between 1984 and 1986.
In the past two years, the international mainstream media have regularly covered the phenomenon that is the People Power movement. With the help of social media, the movement's leader, Robert Kyagulanyi, better known as Bobi Wine, has been noted as a leader of the future by two influential Western publications and has won multiple leadership awards on the African continent. As result, the failings of the 33-year-old National Resistance Movement (NRM) government have been under the global spotlight.
In his latest interview with Al Jazeera, Kyagulanyi appealed to the international community and investors to deal with Uganda and not with President Museveni. As the 2021 presidential and parliamentary elections draw near, foreign debt is coming to the fore in Uganda's political discourse. Where human rights abuse once dominated, managerial failures in government and poor budget outcomes are gaining increasing attention. A series of events in 2018 and 2019 highlighted the impact of debt distress and managerial incompetence on service delivery.
Corruption and incompetence are no longer simply a drag on development but are bringing public institutions to a standstill. Special audits of thirteen out of fourteen regional referral hospitals show persistent drug stock-outs, understaffing and crumbling infrastructure. (The ICU at Jinja Hospital was shut down due to lack of batteries.).
In his latest interview with Al Jazeera, Kyagulanyi appealed to the international community and investors to deal with Uganda and not with President Museveni. As the 2021 presidential and parliamentary elections draw near, foreign debt is coming to the fore in Uganda's political discourse.
Yet the health sector was unable to spend Shs.171 billion ($46,367,125.02) allocated to wages and construction and had to return the funds to the Treasury. Shs150 billion ($40,520,625.00) of that was external funding. Reasons given point to institutional failures, and inability to organise recruitment and procurement in time (Budget Monitoring and Accountability Unit, 2019).
In the education sector, the Makerere University strike was a reaction to the government's inability to cover operational costs, and to the university increasingly relying on fees paid by private students. Ten years ago it was estimated that Shs.600 billion ($162,191,100.00) a year was lost through government procurement fraud alone. Professor Nuwagaba, a Makerere University lecturer and author of the study, estimated that the amount lost was enough to cover all of Makerere University's student fees for two years.
The latest statistics from the primary education sector show the rate of literacy and numeracy fell from 39 per cent to 33 per cent. With a primary school drop-out rate of 60 per cent, this means that most of those who do not complete primary school education are insufficiently literate or numerate to go on to existing skills training institutions. Loans for skills training and higher education worth $100 million expired, with just a little over 50 per cent utilised and the rest returned to source. An application for a new $45 million has been tabled in Parliament.
Global climate right for change
The global climate is right for political change. By Executive Order 13818 (2017) the Trump administration declared global corruption and human rights violations "a national emergency" with respect to serious human rights abuses and corruption globally, which constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. The Magnitsky Act has since been invoked against senior army personnel while the former Inspector General of Police has been publicly designated under Section 7031(c) of the FY 2019 Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act for human rights abuses.
Elsewhere in Africa, five Congolese officials of the DRC's electoral commission and one from the Constitutional Court had visa restrictions placed on them and were publicly designated for electoral fraud. Together with military officials, they have also been identified as having undermined democracy by violating Congolese citizens' rights to peaceful assembly, and freedom of expression.
Other publicly designated officials include Kenya's former Attorney General Amos Wako, Cameroon's Inspector General of the Cameroonian Gendarmerie, Colonel Jean Claude Ango, Malawi's former Minister of Home Affairs, and current Special Advisor on Parliamentary Affairs, Uladi Basikolo Mussa due to involvement in significant corruption (a charge that Wako has denied). Exiled former president of the Gambia, Yahya Jammeh is also designated in an undated notice.
Since October 2019, Tanzania's opposition politician Tundu Lissu and the Justice for All South Sudanese movement have retained a Canadian firm in the area of human rights abuses. Amsterdam & Partners offered its services to the embattled Bobi Wine after the torture the state subjected him to in 2018.
During their press conference, Robert Amsterdam denounced Uganda's history of political violence and the use of $500 million worth (his figure) of US weaponry in carrying out that violence, saying the West cannot ignore it any longer.
The question is how closely multinational commercial interests are aligned with the long-term interests of the political movements, parties and individuals they now support.
The language of the Executive Order implies that to be actionable, the violations must be a threat to American global interests. By implication, if those interests can be secured by means other than sanctioning human rights violators, then violators need not be sanctioned. Yet in order to end impunity African opposition politicians and activists are clamouring for sanctions on serving officials like foreign minister Sam Kutesa cited in the Patrick Ho bribery case.
In an interview with Aly Khan Satchu in October 2018, Amsterdam described his firm's work as "litigation in global markets" around both political and commercial matters. He portrayed foreign investor and domestic governance issues as being intertwined.
The question is how closely multinational commercial interests are aligned with the long-term interests of the political movements, parties and individuals they now support.
Amsterdam described the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as predatory lending and neo-colonial, a choice of phrase that would appeal to post-colonial Africa and Asia. He said that the initiative had "prohibited the growth of representative democracy…and given some autocrats a new lease on life." [Amsterdam video @9:48] Explaining that China uses its surpluses from exporting manufactured goods to "colonise" the rest of the world. Amsterdam warned that "the debt trap is very real".
He mentioned Hambantota, the port that Sri Lanka lost to China as a result of a debt default in 2018. In the same year, the Auditor General revealed that Uganda too has contracted loan agreements with China that surrender sovereign immunity over territory in the event of default.
The phrase "predatory lending" had been used earlier by the sixteen U.S. congressmen who wrote to the Secretaries of State and the Treasury in August 2018, demanding action to disrupt what they described as China's bid to dominate the global economy. What is of concern to the Congressmen is that 23 out of 68 BRI countries are said to be at risk of debt distress. Defaulting BRI countries are expected to seek IMF bail-outs, meaning a portion of America's investment in the IMF (the largest shareholding) would be transferred to China.
The portrayal of Uganda's governance deficits and Western foreign political and commercial interests as organically related issues is not convincing. The exit plan being signaled for President Museveni is less about human rights abuses about which the world has known for over 30 years and more in aid of preserving existing power and trade relations between Uganda and the United States.
In his latest interview (Al Jazeera, November 2019) Kyagulanyi appealed to the international community and international investors, in particular, to hold the Ugandan administration accountable for human rights abuses and corruption. He urged them not to focus only on business relations but to be united with Uganda by values such as "democracy, respect for human rights…zero tolerance of corruption". Ugandan activists are aware of the debt-trap and welcome sanctions.
However, in his interview with Sachu, Amsterdam seemed to be suggesting that perpetrators be given a Get Out of Jail card. Apart from floating the idea of an easy exit for Museveni, he stated that sanctions would only "hand over" countries to China (because Chinese foreign policy does not enforce its anti-foreign bribery laws). He gave Myanmar as an example. Sanctioned for the Rohingya genocide, Myanmar allegedly fell profoundly under Chinese influence.
He is again at odds with African activists when he advises his clients to avoid the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by denominating their foreign contracts in currencies other than dollars to avoid the New York-based SWIFT money transfer system. Corruption, some of the proceeds of which pass through the SWIFT system, costs the African continent billions of dollars a year. The US Department of Justice recovered $30 million from Vice President Teodorín Obiang in 2014. France recovered (and confiscated) $35 million from him in 2017.
Uganda's corruption circles are at least as big as Equatorial Guinea's. There are over 100 ministries and statutory agencies and many more presidential appointees. Museveni himself is rumoured to have stashed away $5 billion in illicit earnings. This figure is difficult to confirm but following the recent '#fishrot' disclosures in which the Namibian Minister of Justice is filmed soliciting a bribe of $200,000 in return for allocating fishing rights to an Icelandic firm, Samherji, it is possible that during Museveni's thirty years at the helm – when he oversaw the country's privatisation programme – he amassed a lot of wealth.
An easy exit for Museveni in the interests of a "smooth transition" could jeopardise the hoped for recovery of stolen funds. Robert Mugabe estate includes $10 million in cash, not an insignificant amount in a country where child delivery in hospitals is done by candlelight and a unit of blood costs $120.00, the equivalent of a doctors' monthly salary or just over two month's pay for a teacher.
Service delivery default or debt default?
More divergences of interest can be expected post-Museveni. A key issue for Ugandans in the inevitable transition will be the status of Uganda's foreign debt. By 2021 debt servicing will have risen to at least 65 per cent of revenue (Auditor General 2018).
In the event that the NRM regime is dislodged in the 2021 elections, expectations for more and better service delivery will be high as they were in post-apartheid South Africa. South Africa elected to pay the apartheid debt and as a result, twenty years later, 40 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line. Access to social housing, electricity, running water and other services in the quantities and to the standards promised during the anti-apartheid struggle is still limited for at least half the population.
An easy exit also implies the inheritance of unsustainable debt, whether or not contracted in return for bribes, and regardless of whether it was put to developmental use or stolen. Without a debt audit carried out by an independent body, the repudiation of illegal, illegitimate and odious debt, and the recovery of misappropriated funds, the new government will not be able to meet service delivery expectations without taking on yet more debt. Service delivery will be the casualty. Zimbabwe cleared its debt to the IMF circa 2016. However latest statistics show undernourishment in Zimbabwe is 51.3%, up from 50.9% in 2016 when the IMF debt was cleared.
Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe discovered that it was unable to get new IMF financing without clearing the $5 billion owed to the African Development Bank and World Bank, and without securing financing commitments from development partners to whom money is owed.
Uganda's corruption circles are at least as big as Equatorial Guinea's. There are over 100 cabinet ministers and many more presidential appointees, in addition to Museveni, who is rumoured to have stashed away $5 billion in illicit earnings.
The legal status of the Museveni debt, and therefore the obligation to repay it, has been challenged by Dr Kizza Besigye on the grounds that it is odious – contracted at a time when the government was waging war against the people of Uganda. There is ample legal precedent for repudiation of odious debt.
To the extent that payment of the Museveni debt would force the State to continue to default on its obligation to meet the basic needs of its citizens, it is illegitimate. As in Zimbabwe, undernourishment in Uganda has been rising for over a decade. Infant and maternal mortality remain high.
Legally, if the Museveni debt can be shown to be odious or that it was contracted with the lenders' knowledge or expectation that the government lacked the capacity to manage or repay it and was in any case inclined to steal it (as with the Mozambique tuna bonds), a case can be made for repudiation.
There are several examples of debt being successfully repudiated. In 2007 Norway established the precedent for repudiating debt which is neither illegitimate nor odious on the grounds that "repayment may be subject to broader considerations of the equities of the debtor-creditor relationship" (UNCTAD).
The legal status of the Museveni debt, and therefore the obligation to repay it, has been challenged by Dr Kizza Besigye on the grounds that it is odious – contracted at a time when the government was waging war against the people of Uganda.
The Tsarist debt owed by Russia was significantly reduced after payment demands were repudiated. The German and Prussian debt used to colonise Poland was repudiated in 1919. Commercial loans made by the Royal Bank of Canada to fallen dictator Tinoco were repudiated by Costa Rica. Germany repudiated Austrian debt in 1938, and the Franco–Italian Conciliation Commission ruled that Italy was exempt from debt incurred during war waged by a previous regime (1947). (Source: The Concept of Odious Debt in International Law, UNCTAD.)
Debt mismanagement continues in Uganda. The long-awaited health insurance scheme – the National Minimum Healthcare Package (NMHCP) – was tabled in Parliament in August 2019. The maternal health component of it will be financed under the World Bank's Health Systems Strengthening Project through a loan of $130 million even though $45 million was wasted when the first attempt to design the NMHCP scheme in 2003 came to nothing. The World Bank's evaluation stated the reasons stemmed from failures within the World Bank itself, including unrealistic design timetables, lack of a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework, and little appreciation of the political economy of the reform programme.
There are tens of projects such as these dating back to the initial Economic Recovery Programme of 1987 for which loans were contracted, commissions were paid, disbursements often not completed, some money stolen and outputs only partially delivered, if at all.
The recovery of public funds lost in this way provides ample scope for alliances between opposition groupings across Africa. It remains to be seen whether Ugandans will be able to leverage the West's new-found willingness to put the well-being of her citizens on the table and negotiate agreements that will prioritise service delivery over investor interests after Museveni's departure. The pressure on them to do the opposite will be massive.
Kenya's War on Graft: Reasons to be Wary
10 min read. Unwieldy prosecution strategies have in the past been used as a guise under which the government appears to prosecute corruption while simultaneously taking steps to guard the prosecuted from legal culpability. This article aims to examine current anti-corruption efforts in light of similar efforts in the past in order to glean lessons and hopefully see what can be expected of current initiatives.
More than 200 people, among them senior government officials, principal secretaries and CEOs of state agencies, have been arrested, arraigned in court and charged with diverse criminal offences as a result of President Uhuru Kenyatta's renewed war on graft.
On 22 July 2019, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) ordered the arrest of and proffered charges against 28 senior government officials, among them Henry Kiplagat Rotich and Kamau Thugge respectively the Cabinet and Principal Secretaries of the National Treasury, the Principal Secretary of the Ministry of the East African Community, the Managing Director of the Kerio Valley Development Authority, a state corporation, and the Director of CMC di Ravenna, an Italian company. According to the DPP, investigations have established that the charged officials flouted procurement rules and abused their oath of office in awarding or otherwise ensuring that CMC di Ravenna secured the contract for the construction of the Arror and Kimwarer dams. The contractual amount is in the region of $600 million.
Prosecuting corruption in Kenya: A troubled past
From Kenya's independence in 1963 to the establishment of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority in 1987, the duty to prosecute government corruption fell on the Office of the Attorney General (AG) who simultaneously happened to be the government's chief legal advisor and chief legal defender. Requiring an office to prosecute its chief client yielded predictable results. Despite damning reports by the office of the Auditor and Controller General, as well as independent reports of the Parliamentary Public Accounts and Investment Committees, the AG remained resolutely intransigent towards bringing charges against government officials of any stripe, and outrightly protected senior government named in the reports.
In the Goldenberg scandal – an export compensation scam under the Daniel arap Moi regime that is estimated to have cost Kenya 10 per cent of her GDP – the AG at the time (and current Senator for Busia County), Amos Wako, failed to initiate proceedings for four years after the scandal came to light, and was only moved to do so by a suspension of International Monetary Fund (IMF) aid and the combined pressure of the Law Society of Kenya, donor nation governments and an increasingly outraged and assertive public.
Notwithstanding the said pressure, Wako used a variety of guises to impede the prosecution, including attempting to oust the jurisdiction of the High Court in the matter, numerous adjournments, withdrawing charges altogether and then being compelled by foreign pressure to reinstate them. The Minister of Finance at the time was never so much as charged and to date nobody has ever been convicted.
In the Goldenberg scandal, the AG at the time (and current Senator for Busia County), Amos Wako, failed to initiate proceedings for four years after the scandal came to light, and was only moved to do so by a suspension of IMF aid and the combined pressure of the Law Society of Kenya, donor nation governments and an increasingly outraged and assertive public.
Kenya then moved to break the prosecutorial monopoly of the AG. The Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority (KACA) was established in 1987 by the amendment of the Prevention of Corruption Act (Cap. 65) but was hampered by legal, administrative and budgetary constraints that appeared deliberate. Its first director, John Harun Mwau, was appointed 10 years after the establishment of KACA, for instance, and was shortly thereafter sacked by the president at the recommendation of a tribunal of inquiry after the director had obtained warrants of arrest against high ranking officials of the Treasury as well as the Kenya Revenue Authority.
It is noteworthy that Mwau was not conventionally qualified for his post nor was the process of his appointment subject to a transparent recruitment process. Indeed it is believed that the appointment was a quid pro quo in return for his dropping out as a presidential candidate. Nonetheless he was fired just as he appeared to make progress.
As such, whereas his successor Aaron Ringera was undoubtedly well qualified for the post, being a well-respected High Court judge, his appointment was nonetheless greeted with scepticism. Justice Ringera took office in 1997 and by 2000 KACA had been declared unconstitutional by the High Court before any of the cases it had instituted had been, the court finding that the existence of KACA infringed upon the constitutional powers of the offices of the Attorney General and the Commissioner of Police for two main reasons: first, that Justice Ringera, being a judge and simultaneously the head of an organ of the Executive, offended the doctrine of separation of powers; and second, that under section 26 of the Constitution (as it then was), the AG had the exclusive power to prosecute. The cases that KACA was handling were handed over to the AG. These cases were either not continued or ended up being dismissed by courts.
The demise of KACA led to widespread civic and international outrage. Following the general elections in 2002 – widely believed to be the first truly free elections of their kind in Kenya's history – Mwai Kibaki was elected president on a broad reform mandate, key to which was fighting corruption. He established KACA's successor, the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) in April 2003 by way of the enactment of the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act. Exactly one year later, in April 2004, KACC was to face an acid test following the coming to light of what would prove to be the new administration's nemesis, the Anglo Leasing Scandal (Anglo Leasing).
Anglo Leasing was a government procurement scandal in which a diverse array of fraudulent entities were secretly and unlawfully awarded large security contracts, and subsequently failed to deliver goods or services or grossly overcharged for them. In total it was estimated that there were at least 18 such contracts with a total value of $721 million.
The scandal reached the highest levels of government and was well-documented by the whistleblower John Githongo, who was then the Permanent Secretary for Governance and Ethics. Githongo was a former Executive Director of Transparency International in Kenya and was widely regarded as a person of integrity. Indeed his appointment was intended by Kibaki to signal his seriousness in the fight against corruption. Githongo's report implicated the president himself, his vice president as well as various cabinet ministers and permanent secretaries.
The consequences were limited. The newly established KACC cleared three cabinet secretaries of obstructing the investigation using the novel and startling legal innovation that the whistleblower was not an investigator as defined by law. Far from playing the role of an independent prosecutor, KACC either did not investigate the most culpable, or when it did, it resorted to technicalities in order to defeat the very purpose it was formed to serve.
Anglo Leasing was a government procurement scandal in which a diverse array of fraudulent entities were secretly and unlawfully awarded large security contracts, and subsequently failed to deliver goods or services or grossly overcharged for them. In total it was estimated that there were at least 18 such contracts with a total value of $721 million.
In what is likely to exert a chilling effect on the exposure of government scandals, Githongo has recently had judgement entered against him personally in the amount of $270,000 for defamation in a suit brought by Dr. Christopher Murungaru who as Minister of Internal Security at the time of the coming to light of Anglo Leasing, was perhaps the leading figure under investigation in the scandal. This is the latest in a long series of legal setbacks which Githongo has faced since doing Kenya the immense service of bringing Anglo Leasing to light.
The Executive: Questionable tactics
Prosecution is no easy task. Prosecuting economic crimes such as corruption is even more so. These crimes tend to be characterised by a high degree of sophistication in terms of commission as well as concealment. Payments to those concerned, for instance, may be in the form of 'commissions' by shadowy organisations to multiple offshore jurisdictions, which are hard to trace and whose illegality is difficult to prove.
Unlike other crimes, a disproportionate amount of evidence tends to be in the hands of those who are already suspects. Gathering such evidence takes a great deal of time and expertise, involving teams of professionals applying specialised forensic techniques. The suspects themselves tend to be wealthy and powerful. They are able to hire large teams of lawyers who take advantage of every legal loophole, technicality, adjournment, appeal and delay in their client's favour. They are able to apply pressure to witnesses and even to those working within the prosecution. Cases are likely to drag on for a long period of time and a government that wishes to see quick results in the war against corruption would be ill-advised to rely on prosecution as its primary and most visible strategy.
The DPP and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) have conducted much of the war on corruption as a drama played out in the public eye. Press releases are issued and persons high and mighty are arrested with great fanfare. These persons are arraigned in court in vast numbers, and when bail is granted, the DPP cries foul. One of the major reasons that inform opposition to bail by the DPP is that the accused may interfere with investigations. This then implies that investigations were incomplete at the time suspects were arrested. This working methodology appears to essentially be a public relations exercise that fundamentally undermines successful prosecution.
Unlike other crimes, a disproportionate amount of evidence tends to be in the hands of those who are already suspects. Gathering such evidence takes a great deal of time and expertise, involving teams of professionals applying specialised forensic techniques.
Furthermore, those accused are often skilled political operatives, with established relationships within media. Charismatic and often able to appeal to ethnic loyalties, they can use the media as a tool to gain public sympathy and scuttle efforts at holding them accountable. In addition, early engagement of the media by the DPP as part of political theatre is likely to expose strategies and information prematurely, forewarning the accused. It must also be acknowledged that media organisations are corporate profit-making entities with interests of their own that may or may not align with the public interest.
Take for example the second National Youth Service (NYS) scandal. At one point there were 30 accused persons on one charge sheet in one case. Each was represented by at least one lawyer, and frequently by a team of lawyers. Each individual had to be put on their defence separately; each called and cross-examined their own witnesses. This takes about four days per witness. No country in the world can conduct a speedy trial, or even a fair one, under such circumstances. Even a matter as basic as a courtroom was a problem: there exists no courtroom in Kenya large enough to conduct this case, which had to be held in a ceremonial hall.
Unwieldy prosecution strategies have in the past been used as a guise under which the government appears to prosecute corruption while simultaneously taking steps to guard the prosecuted from legal culpability. During the Goldenberg scandal, the Attorney General, against the advice of his own Director of Public Prosecutions, framed more than 90 counts in one charge despite clear evidence that this would invalidate the charges, which is precisely what happened.
Given the difficulty of corruption investigation prosecution, cases should be restricted and prioritised based on pre-established criteria. Such criteria would include prosecuting the most senior figures, establishing judicial precedent and the probability of a successful outcome, for example, by targeting offences such as tax evasion that are relatively easier to prove.
Moreover, strategies such as plea bargaining and summary proceedings have proven useful in other jurisdictions as a means of shortening litigation and also gathering evidence of criminal activity that would otherwise be unavailable or require an enormous expenditure of surveillance and forensic resources.
The President
Prosecuting corruption amounts to locking the stable door after the horse has bolted. Prevention is by a huge margin the better strategy, a large responsibility that lies with the Executive headed by the President. That we are experiencing corruption at all means that the Executive has failed to stop it and must now rely entirely on prosecuting those whom it has allowed to raid public coffers.
The Executive does not appear to have a coherent professional strategy to fight corruption. In the recent past, buildings on riparian land were brought down in a flurry of activity. Now there is sudden silence. This work has not been completed. Also forgotten is NYS 1, in which the central figure is now a governor. There needs to be a demonstrated professional understanding of corruption in Kenya and its underlying causes that drives the war on corruption; absent that the process will appear ad hoc and susceptible to being interpreted as a platform to selectively seize and exploit the weaknesses of political opponents.
The Executive does not appear to have a coherent professional strategy to fight corruption. In the recent past, buildings on riparian land were brought down in a flurry of activity. Now there is sudden silence.
Furthermore, the close relationship between the presidency and prosecutorial agencies is problematic. Factual independence of prosecutorial agencies from members of government is crucial towards the effectiveness of prosecution as an anti-corruption strategy. Components of factual independence include stable and widely applied legal foundations for the prosecution of crimes. As such, prosecutions ideally should emanate from an independent office exercising a constitutional and legal mandate independently, rather than following directions from any one office, however well meaning. Trust in the war on corruption and the legitimacy of the ruling regime as a whole could be undermined if it is perceived that those closely aligned to State House are unlikely to be prosecuted.
The blame game: The Judiciary
The Judiciary has been accused of granting bail with alarming ease to the high and mighty, while simultaneously denying the same benefits to ordinary citizens. Chicken thieves are subject to incarceration while those who have stolen millions roam this land free and unburdened.
The President himself, on the occasion of his Jamhuri (Republic) Day speech on December 12 2018, accused the Judiciary of granting "ridiculously low bail terms". The Judiciary has been accused of misunderstanding the presumption of innocence and equating it with a presumption of virtue, being divorced from the aims of society in general and in particular being insensitive to the scourge of corruption. Indeed political actors have not shied away from accusing the Judiciary of outright collusion with accused persons. Individual judges have also been mentioned adversely in social media in ways ranging from the mildly disturbing to the downright scandalous.
It is germane to the President's comments on "ridiculously low bail" that in the preceding week, top officials of the Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) and the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF), including Joe Sang, the Managing Director of KPC and Geoffrey Mwangi, CEO of NHIF, had been charged with abuse of office leading to the theft of billions of shillings. They were released on a bail of Sh2 million each. In July 2018, top officials of the Kenya Power Company, including the CEO Ken Tarus, his predecessor Ben Chumo and senior managers were similarly charged and released on bail terms of Sh1 million.
Where the Judiciary has been criticised for giving bail, no evidence has been proffered of the compelling reasons against it that the Judiciary ignored. Suspects have presented themselves to police stations and have attended court proceedings voluntarily. The purpose of bail is to secure attendance, not to act as some sort of premature punishment prior to conviction by its denial.
While it is still too early to pass definitive judgement on the effectiveness of this new wave of prosecution against corruption there is a key historical hurdle that Uhuru Kenyatta's administration will have to overcome. The prosecution or lack thereof of Anglo Leasing suspects in a scandal that was enormously well-documented leads us to the inevitable presumption that that those crucial to the campaign of the next general election in 2022, either by dint of being sufficiently wealthy and willing to fund the election campaign or perceived as being able to guarantee key ethnic loyalties, will not be successfully prosecuted and that after the dust and fanfare settles those most culpable will not be held accountable. Shifting the blame to other institutions has already begun and is likely to continue.
Who is Policing the Police? Kenya's Lame Duck Oversight Mechanism
19 min read. Seven years after an independent oversight body was formed to monitor and investigate police misconduct and abuse, Kenyans are still suffering under the hands of an incompetent and uncaring police force that gets away with excesses with impunity. Has IPOA lived up to its promise?
First Impressions
On the right-hand corner at the top of Policing Lens, the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA)'s quarterly newsletter, two heavily padded policemen positioned inside the frame of a magnifying glass are holding shields branded 'Police'. The duo have their baton-wielding fists raised in the air, poised to descend on a seemingly already subdued civilian lying motionless on the ground. This surreal image ushers one into IPOA's world, a Freudian admission that the National Police Service (NPS) may not be as transformed from what it used to be when it was known as the Kenya Police Force – still deploying brawn in place of brain.
This disturbing yet at once candid logo subconsciously summarises IPOA's statement of intent, which is that the statutory agency is not afraid of confronting the dark history and the not-so-squeaky-clean present day state of affairs within the police, an unflattering confession they are willing to make publicly. Conversely, the choice of IPOA's optics could be (mis)construed as an act of concession, confirming that despite its far-reaching powers and mandate, IPOA, just like the overpowered civilian victim of police brutality, remains subdued by police excesses.
Yet the need for IPOA to live up to its full mandate cannot be gainsaid.
Waki, Alston and Ransley
During the 29 May 2009 United Nations Human Rights Council sitting in Geneva, Switzerland, Prof. Philip Alston, the then UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, faced a dilemma. Coming merely two months after his inaugural Kenya working tour, Prof. Alston was calling for the investigation of the Kenya Police Force in a case where it was suspected of involvement in the execution of two human rights defenders. But as he pushed for an investigation into the police, Prof. Alston regretted that as things stood at the time (and maybe as they still stand to date), it was impossible to investigate the police.
Prof. Alston wrote: ''As there is, according inter alia to the report of the Commission of Inquiry into Post-Election Violence (CIPEV, pages 420-421), no existing independent unit capable of effectively and credibly investigating possible police misconduct in Kenya, we consider it imperative that an independent investigation be carried out with support from a foreign police force.''
Prof. Alston was partly basing his observation on the October 2008 Commission of Inquiry into Post-Election Violence (CIPEV) report authored by Court of Appeal Judge Philip Waki, who chaired the CIPEV, otherwise referred to as the Waki Commission. Apart from pointing out the extent to which it was impossible to investigate the police for suspected police-inflicted deaths and injuries, the Waki Commission showed the extent to which the police were suspected of serious human rights violations during the 2007/2008 post-election violence, where one in every three of the 1,133 deaths documented by CIPEV were as a result of bullet wounds. These figures, though supported by morgue data, were disputed by the Commissioner of Police, Maj. Gen. Hussein Ali, who knew of only 616 deaths, emphatically telling CIPEV that only the police could give authoritative figures for those who died as a result of the post-election violence.
The Waki Commission showed the extent to which the police were suspected of serious human rights violations during the 2007/2008 post-election violence, where one in every three of the 1,133 deaths documented by CIPEV were as a result of bullet wounds.
It was under these circumstances that CIPEV recommended the establishment of an "Independent Police Conduct Authority" outside the police, with the legislative power and authority to investigate complaints against the police and police conduct. By the time Alston was suggesting international investigation of police killings, nothing had happened to implement CIPEV's crucial recommendation, but his report now made it imperative to establish an independent police oversight agency to curtail future contemplation of seeking foreign investigative assistance.
As if pre-empting Prof. Alston's May 29 presentation in Geneva on 7 May 2009, President Mwai Kibaki tasked Justice (retired) Philip Ransley to look into concerns raised by the other two Philips – Alston and Waki – by appointing him to chair the National Task Force on Police Reforms. Ransley's Commission aimed ''to examine existing policies and institutional structures of the police, and to recommend comprehensive reforms that would enhance effectiveness, professionalism and accountability in the police services.'' Ransley was given 90 days, and in October 2009, having wrapped up his hearings, Ransley handed his report, which contained a whopping 200 recommendations, to the head of state.
Ransley asked for, among other things, terminological change seeking the establishment of the National Police Service (NPS), a change from the scandal-ridden Kenya Police Force. The idea was to shift the mindset of the police towards civilians, a change from always resorting to force in the course of duty to one of offering a professional service. This was to also influence civilians' perception of the police, from that of antagonism to one of co-operation and collaboration. Ransley similarly asked for the setting up of the National Police Service Commission (NPSC), tasked with overseeing the human resource component of the NPS, starting from recruitment, appointments, promotions, and general welfare of the police, away from the Public Service Commission (PSC), which previously handled these responsibilities.
More importantly, and in responding to Alston's and Waki's concerns, Ransley recommended the establishment of the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA), a civilian body mandated by law to keep the proposed NPS in check. In imagining an ideal scenario, Ransley envisioned an IPOA to watch over financial spending by the NPS; ensure the NPS adhered to international best practices in policing; receive and initiate investigations into complaints on police misconduct; monitor, review and audit police investigations; as well as coordinate other institutions on issues of police oversight, among other things.
The Resistance
That Ransley's task force completed its work within 90 days and submitted its report soon thereafter came as a surprise to sceptics, including those within the diplomatic corps. This was evidenced in a WikiLeaks cable originating from the US embassy in Nairobi, which read:
''…However, several prominent persons have expressed doubts about the government's motives in establishing the PRC. They note that the PRC's short 90-day mandate is far too little for such a massive task and that Police Commissioner Hussein Ali will act to thwart all but superficial reforms. We share some of these doubts, but will take a wait-and-see approach, recognizing that the PRC provides an opportunity – the only one at this time – for much-needed police reform. The UK shares our doubts, but will support the commission financially by paying for a UK and a Commonwealth police expert to serve on the PRC. If the GOK acts to implement real reform we are positioned to support the effort with funds….''
The Americans and the British might have had valid reasons to second guess the intentions in setting up the Ransley task force, referred to erroneously in the WikiLeaks cable as the Police Reform Commission (PRC). A few months earlier, before the appointment of Ransley and his team on 7 May 2009, the then powerful Minister of State for Internal Security and Provincial Administration, Prof. George Saitoti, had placed a mischievous announcement in the Kenya Gazette, Notice Number 8144 of September 2008. The alert was about a Police Oversight Board, a proposed agency populated by presidential appointees, which the minister wanted domiciled in his ministry, and whose members – named in the gazette notice – the minister had powers to dismiss at will. This therefore meant that the mandate to oversee the police would remain within the state, under the same ministry as the police, a bad attempt at pseudo self-regulation. Prof. Saitoti's actions seemed pre-emptive.
At around the same time, the non-statutory Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), among others, was busy singing the chorus of the establishment of a civilian police oversight body. In fact, the KHRC had gone as far as drafting a bill proposing the creation of the Police Oversight Board, a name and concept which the minister appropriated. The difference was that the KHRC was proposing an autonomous civilian agency, while the minister wanted to create an appendage of the police within his portfolio. It was these sorts of cat-and-mouse games that eroded credibility on efforts by the state towards police reforms, setting the stage for doubting Thomases as Ransley got working.
Further, in revelations contained in the aforementioned WikiLeaks cable, Prof. Saitoti was reported to have told the US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Johnnie Carson, that what was needed in police reform was ''evolution, not revolution''. The minister had also been quoted – utterances he denied having ever made – saying that only "normal reforms are required [like] looking into the welfare of officers, adequate facilities to increase the morale and efficiency" of the police. This strategy, of doing cosmetic reforms by focusing on the more bureaucratic end of things as opposed to delving into the more substantive questions of police violations, is one which would later be used to keep IPOA distracted from its core mandate.
The Inaugural Term
On 27 August 2010, almost a year after Ransley's task force submitted its report to President Mwai Kibaki, Kenya promulgated a new constitution. With the new legal regime in place, and staying true to Ransley's recommendations, Parliament passed the IPOA Act (Act No. 35 of 2011), legislation which paved way for the establishment of the Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA). This was a huge milestone. Other than South Africa's Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), there remains no other policing oversight agency in Africa.
However, rather than looking to South Africa, IPOA heavily borrowed its architecture from the UK's Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), formerly the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). This was possibly a direct result of the input by the British expert seconded to the Ransley task force, as explicitly intimated in the WikiLeaks cable. Consequently, IPOA's objectives were outlined in Section 5 of the Act thus:
- a) Hold the Police accountable to the public in the performance of their functions;
- b) Give effect to the provision of Article 244 of the Constitution that the Police shall strive for professionalism and discipline and shall promote and practice transparency and accountability; and
- c) Ensure independent oversight of the handling of complaints by the Service.
In adhering to the Act's requirements on the hiring of the IPOA board, the president, through Kenya Gazette notices 6938 and 6939 of 22 May 2012, appointed IPOA's inaugural chairman and the agency's board members, who were all sworn in on 4 June 2012. Ransley's team had outlined the composition of the board to include two persons with experience in public administration, alongside individuals with knowledge in financial management, corporate management, human rights, and one with experience in religious leadership. The board's chairperson had to be someone qualified to be appointed a judge of the High Court of Kenya.
Further, in revelations contained in the aforementioned WikiLeaks cable, Prof. Saitoti was reported to have told the US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Johnnie Carson, that what was needed in police reform was ''evolution, not revolution''.
As fate would have it, Macharia Njeru, currently a member of the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), who had served as a member of the Ransley task force, was picked as IPOA's first chairman. One would have imagined that having been part of the Ransley team, Njeru would hit the ground running, having had the advantage of being one of the agency's draftsmen. However, by the end of his board's six-year term, Njeru's team came under heavy criticism,for what was considered an utterly dismal performance, especially by victims of police excesses.
The Numbers
During its inaugural term, IPOA received an average of four serious complaints a day. As a result, the common refrain against the agency was that of the almost 10,000 cases of police misconduct reported to it, IPOA had only secured a paltry three convictions. These were: High Court Criminal Case No. 41 of 2014 (Republic Vs Inspector of Police Veronicah Gitahi and Police Constable Issa Mzee, and Criminal Appeal No. 23 of 2016 (Inspector of Police Veronicah Gitahi and Police Constable Issa Mzee Vs Republic), and High Court Case No. 78 of 2014 (Titus Ngamau Musila).
Pundits argue that strictly speaking, these were two convictions. In the first case, two police officers were convicted, thereafter appealing the ruling. They lost at the appellate court, a development which saw IPOA count the double loss by the officers as two wins on its part.
During its inaugural term, IPOA received an average of four serious complaints a day. As a result, the common refrain against the agency was that of the almost 10,000 cases of police misconduct reported to it, IPOA had only secured a paltry three convictions.
By 30 April 2018, when the inaugural board's mandate was just coming to a close, the agency had received a total of 9,878 complaints. These were both from members of the public and from within the police service. Of these, 5,085 were classified as needing to be investigated. The rest, as per IPOA's breakdown of the numbers, were referred to the Internal Affairs Unit of the National Police Service (748 cases), IPOA's inspections and monitoring directorate (364 cases), the National Police Service (249 cases), the National Police Service Commission (319 cases), the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (41 cases), Officers Commanding Police Stations (370 cases), the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (289 cases), and another 312 cases were shared between the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, the National Land Commission, and the Commission of Administrative Justice (Office of the Ombudsman).
Of the 5,085 cases meant for investigations, 752 were reported to have been investigated and completed, 458 were closed preliminarily, 72 were still under investigation, 76 were under legal review by IPOA, 103 were forwarded to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, 11 were sent to the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, with 6 referred to the National Police Service. Furthermore, 459 complaints were dismissed as falling outside IPOA's mandate, 1,642 cases were closed for what IPOA terms ''withdrawal by complainants; matters before Court; not actionable; and insufficient information.'' 64 cases were before the courts.
As of March 2019, the total number of cases reported to IPOA stood at 12,781, with 136 cases taken to court. In a mark of progress, three more convictions have been added to IPOA's tally since the new board took office in September 2018. It goes without saying that the new board is to a large extent building on the groundwork done by their predecessors, meaning by the end of the six-year mandate, IPOA's second board should have better figures in comparison.
By any account, IPOA's 2012–2018 numbers are mind-boggling, its paltry three convictions not doing much in terms of building confidence within the aggrieved civilian population. As a matter of fact, naysayers will be forgiven for thinking the numbers being thrown around are all a well-choreographed game of smoke and mirrors, a case of motion without movement.
However, the question one may want to ask is, was IPOA set up for failure from the word go?
The Bureaucracy
While listening to Macharia Njeru campaigning to be picked as the male representative of the Law Society of Kenya in the Judicial Service Commission, it became obvious that the one talking point IPOA's inaugural chairman wouldn't let go of was that he had successfully built an institution from scratch.
Njeru's exit message as his term came to a close was on how much he, his board and IPOA's senior staffers had worked in putting in place systems. There was talk of financial management awards, all bureaucratic shenanigans – not unimportant but neither were they IPOA's core mandate. There was certainly need for institution building, but at what expense did this happen? Did Njeru's team sacrifice IPOA's primary oversight responsibility at the altar of corporatism, or was it a trap set for him from the word go – to keep him busy paper pushing and not allow his team adequate time and resources to focus on police misconduct?
When looking at IPOA's founding financials – an annual budget of Sh96 million (US$ 960,000) in 2012/2013 – it is clear that from the beginning one of the ways the state wished to put the agency on a tight leash was by limiting its budgetary allocations. Seeing that the agency needed to build from the bottom up – hire premises, recruit and train staffers, establish regional offices, among other day-to-day operational logistics, it was evident that with a paltry financial allocation, the board would be kept busy micromanaging budget line items as police violations went through the roof. For instance, it is astonishing to note that in 2013, IPOA could only hire an initial staff of six people.
Possibly seeing that the agency had fallen into the institution-building-at-the-expense-of-its-core-mandate trap, IPOA's budget eventually grew to Sh696 million in 2017/2018 and Sh800 million in 2018/2019, barely Sh1,000 (US$10) per complaint per day, and definitely an insignificant amount of money considering the scope of oversight expected of the agency. By the time Njeru's team was leaving, IPOA had acquired a total of 27 motor vehicles – a number one might find laughable, seeing that IPOA's operations needed to cover the entire country – and had a staff roster of a mere 143 employees. How was such an institution, even if perfectly structured, capable of overseeing a National Police Service that recruited an average of 10,000 police officers on an annual basis? Would IPOA ever be fit for purpose?
In 2014, the board developed a four-year strategic plan to coincide with its 2018 exit. The plan was built around four pillars, namely compliance by the police with human rights standards; restored public confidence and trust in police; improved detention facilities; a functional Internal Affairs Unit (IAU) of the National Police Service; and a model institution on policing in Africa. In its usual brick and motor state of mind, IPOA reported that ''it is pleased that the National Police Service has secured an office for the IAU, and indications are that the Unit will be operational by August 2018.'' Other than that, it is anyone's guess as to whether any of the other targets were satisfactorily achieved under the strained circumstances the agency was operating under.
The Backlash
By all means, IPOA's inaugural term had too many moving parts that kept the agency busy, thereby making it drop the ball on many occasions regarding delivery of its core mandate to civilians, who continue to suffer in the hands of rogue elements within the National Police Service. According to Wangui Kimari of the Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC), and as has become a common refrain in Kenyan society today, vitu kwa ground ni different (reality bites). For starters, IPOA is not perceived as a friend of the civilians, thanks to its one-size-fits-all bureaucracies.
''Victims of police brutality and families of those killed by the police in places like Mathare and Korogocho are weary of going to report their complaints to IPOA for many reasons,'' Wangui told me when we met in Nairobi. ''Some of them are broke, they cannot even afford bus fare, yet they are expected to go to IPOA's intimidating head office to make a statement. Once at IPOA, the majority of the complainants, who are either illiterate or semi-literate, will always be harassed for either not filing their complaints properly or for leaving out crucial information. It is in filling these gaps that trusted grassroots organisations such as the social justice centers come into the picture, but even after lodging the complaints properly, the long periods of time which lapse before IPOA moves on the cases is discouraging to the victims and their families.''
In a word, IPOA's operations are not fit for purpose since its user experience remains wanting.
According to Gacheke Gachihi, an MSJC activist, IPOA needs to have its tentacles in places such as Mathare, which record some of the highest numbers of extrajudicial killings. It is public knowledge that informal settlements in Nairobi have well-known killer cops, some whom go as far as parading their past, present and future conquests on social media. To Gacheke, the fact that IPOA does not have outposts in places like Mathare shows its top-bottom approach to oversight, where instead of going to the ground, the agency keeps to its air-conditioned offices.
''IPOA needs to come and be in the midst of the people who need it most,'' Gacheke told me. ''Their presence here can work as a deterrent to rogue police officers. If they think residents of Mathare flood their registry, they will be surprised at the many cases which go unreported.''
According to Gacheke Gachihi, an MSJC activist, IPOA needs to have its tentacles in places such as Mathare, which record some of the highest numbers of extrajudicial killings. It is public knowledge that informal settlements in Nairobi have well-known killer cops, some whom go as far as parading their past, present and future conquests on social media.
In the opinion of some front line human rights aficionados who wished to remain anonymous – they do not wish to sanitise IPOA's arrogance with a comment – IPOA's biggest shortfall has been its opacity. They claim IPOA behaves as if it is ignorant of the fact that for it to succeed it needs to operate within an ecosystem comprising all kinds of stakeholders nurtured by trust. It is this sense of indifference from IPOA, they say, which has resulted in disengagement by human rights defenders, who are getting completely disinterested in IPOA's work processes. ''They never answer calls or reply to emails,'' one of them told me. ''It is a complete disgrace.''
The other battle on IPOA's plate is that of perception. Wangui told me that when she brought mothers and widows of victims of extrajudicial killings to IPOA's open day, the majority of them did not want to come close, since they considered IPOA as part of the National Police Service. ''They wouldn't go to the IPOA stand,'' Wangui told me, ''because to them, hao ni polisi.''
The Missing Repository
According to leading human rights lawyer Sam Mohochi – previously executive director of the Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU) and immediate former executive director of the Kenyan Section of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ-K) – any suspicious death, and particularly death at the hands of or while in the custody of the police or of a prison officer, should automatically trigger a Magistrate's Inquest under Sections 386 and 387 of the Criminal Procedure Code. In Mohochi's view, IPOA should therefore be the undisputed repository for all such cases in instances where the police are involved, such that IPOA either exonerates or implicates them.
''All custodial deaths should result in an inquiry being instituted,'' Mohochi told me in Nairobi. ''But you will notice that as things stand, IPOA does not comply with provisions of the law.''
''If you look at most cases of extrajudicial killings in Kenya, unless the family or other actors complain, no automatic legal action occurs,'' Mohochi told me. ''But two, now bring in IPOA. All such cases are automatically expected to be referred to IPOA, directly, by the police. That then means that in IPOA's progress reports, the agency should always indicate how many such cases have been forwarded to it, by the police. Unfortunately, if you look at IPOA's progress reports, they are completely silent on that. Yet that would have been the repository where you could keep tally of extrajudicial killings, irrespective of whether investigations are complete or not. That way, there could be a credible tally of encounter killings by the police, reported by the police. What we mostly have are statistics of cases reported by victims, against the police.''
In Mohochi's opinion, the ideal situation in cases where police bullets have been used to either harm or kill civilians should be that the Officer Commanding Station (OCS) who is in charge of the police in a given jurisdiction should be the one to forward any suspicious police action to IPOA as a measure of accountability. This means that if the police abuse their powers in a locality and the OCS does not report it to IPOA, then the agency should have punitive measures in dealing with such a non-compliant OCS.
And if dealing with an OCS gets cumbersome – which should not be the case since IPOA has statutory powers – then IPOA should at the very least have its own investigators stationed at every police station in order for the agency to get first-hand accounts of police excesses, which are then forwarded to the agency's legal and investigative units. Failure to do this, Mohochi says, will result in the majority of police violations to go unreported; even if they get reported, there will always be the evidential challenge since the police, in protecting each other, will neither secure the crime scene nor get witness statements of their own volition.
''IPOA should issue a circular to all police stations,'' Mohochi told me, ''that should any case of extrajudicial killings occur, they need to be notified immediately. Failure to do so, even IPOA's own investigators will not find it easy investigating a non-cooperative police service.''
Further, Mohochi told me, what IPOA is doing – documenting police violations and prosecuting rogue officers – is something that was already being done by non-state actors. However, the establishment of IPOA was meant to scale things up in terms of convictions, something which is not happening. In Mohochi's recollection, police officers have been jailed before IPOA came into place, but IPOA was meant to act as a bigger deterrent through higher conviction rates. If this is not attainable, Mohochi fears that IPOA will not be serving the purpose it was founded for.
The Evidence Puzzle
Over the years, and as intimated by Mohochi, insufficient evidence has remained one of the prominent bottlenecks in litigating against police violations in cases of extrajudicial killings. For the most part, aside from entities such as the Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU), who were for a long time the go-to place for independent, credible autopsies, especially in public interest cases, attempts to prosecute the police either by IPOA or other actors have run into headwinds for lack of admissible evidence on the cause and circumstance of death. As such, the passing of the National Coroners Service Act of 2017 came as a huge relief for both human rights defenders and evidence-based agencies such as IPOA. This meant that in the event of any suspicious deaths, then there would be a legally mandated entity which would take up the matter, preserve the evidence, institute an inquiry, after which prosecutorial steps can follow.
According to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) handbook on the Act, much as the Kenyan version of the coroner's office will not be quasi-judicial, as an important starting point, the Act establishes a framework for investigations and determination of the cause of reported unnatural deaths in the country. Some of the anticipated quick wins are that obstruction of investigations, bearing false witness, and refusal to comply with directions from the coroner will be things of the past.
Further, the Act provides immunity from civil and criminal prosecution, or any other administrative action for that matter, for those who give evidence to the coroner. This is a huge improvement from the current reliance on Sections 385-387 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which provide for an inquest in cases of suspicious deaths, but does not have the sorts of far-reaching powers provided by the Act. Unfortunately for IPOA and its civilian complainants, and in that typical Kenyan self-sabotage fashion, since the signing of the Act into law in July 2017, it remains gathering dust, and is still not operationalised.
The Recruitment Charade
However, after everything is said and done, one of IPOA's persisting headaches remains the almost always scandalous police recruitment exercise. It goes without saying that if the National Police Service keeps filling its ranks with individuals not suited for policing, then no matter what interventions IPOA resorts to, its in-tray will forever remain full of cases of police misconduct by rogue officers, persons who were never fit to be part of the service from the word go. To date, no matter what IPOA or other statutory watchdog agencies like the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) do, the problem of shoddy police recruitment has kept recurring, courtesy of the now perfected selective application of recruitment guidelines.
For starters, recruitment of police officers is the sole prerogative of the National Police Service Commission (NPSC), as recommended by the Ransley task force. However, the law allows the NPSC some discretion, through which it can delegate this responsibility to the Inspector General of Police. This, however, should not be a recipe for subpar recruitment, because the recruitment process should be strictly guided by the NPSC's Legal Notice No. 41 of 2015. The legal regulations contain general provisions, recruitment categories, gender, regional and ethnic balance requirements, functions of the NPSC in the recruitment, advertising timelines and positions to be advertised for, contents of the advertisement, composition of recruitment panels, calendar of activities for the entire recruitment process, determination of successful candidates, disqualifications, a complaints management system, training schedule and issuance of certificates upon appointment, and submission of the recruitment report to Parliament.
More importantly, Regulations 11-15 of the Legal Notice prescribe a two-tier recruitment process, where in the initial stage, interested candidates submit applications to the NPSC, which having considered education qualifications, gender and ethnic balance, et cetera, is then required to shortlist three times the number of prospective officers it wishes to enlist at each of the recruitment centers. These names are then meant to be shared with the public so that any objections about the recruitment of any individual can be brought forth. Thereafter, the NPSC is supposed to conduct verification of documents as well as medical and physical aptitude examinations. Taking into consideration how rigorous the process should be, from the time of advertisement of vacancies to when the new recruits report to training, Regulation 17 of the Legal Notice provides for a 90-day period for completion of the recruitment cycle.
Unfortunately, the NPSC and the Inspector General of Police have continued practising their traditional one-day recruitment exercises, where they focus not on intellectual aptitude, as the two-tier processes envisions, but give prominence to physical attributes. Aside from that, flawed advertisement processes, lack of public participation, cases of bribery and patronage, and the locking out of observers – who are mandated by law to have access to the entire recruitment process – continue to be the order of the day.
In July 2014, the newly established IPOA took a bold step by taking the NPSC to court after it observed incidents of corruption, fraud and massive irregularities during recruitment. IPOA sought for nullification of the entire exercise, prayers which were granted by the High Court. On appeal, IPOA's victory was upheld by the Court of Appeal under Petition No. 390 of 2014 and Civil Appeal No. 324 of 2014 (The Recruitment Decisions). According to those in the know, the government did not look at IPOA's actions favourably, resulting in reported cases of not-so-subtle intimidation, with strong attempts at creating factions within the IPOA board.
Unfortunately, the NPSC and the Inspector General of Police have continued practising their traditional one-day recruitment exercises, where they focus not on intellectual aptitude, as the two-tier processes envisions, but give prominence to physical attributes.
In a sad turn of events, neither the NPSC nor the Inspector General of Police seemed to have learnt their lesson. Two years later, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) released a comprehensive report titled ''DisService to the Service: Report of the Monitoring of the 2016 Recruitment of Police Constables to the National Police Service'', in which it extensively observed that police recruitment continued being marred with serious irregularities characterised by interference from the executive arm of government and a total disregard of the two-tier process, which is meant to attract a higher calibre of trainee officers.
In one of its pleadings, the KNCHR wrote, ''The continuous lack of adherence to follow the two-tier process means that achieving professionalism within the National Police Service will remain a pipe dream. The recruitment process serves as the point of entry into the service, and thus any attempts at professionalising the service should begin at this level.''
Therefore under the prevailing circumstances, where regulations are ignored at will by the highest organs of the state, IPOA will remain a lame-duck mitigating force inside a garbage-in garbage-out setup.
This report is a criminal human rights reporting project of Africa Uncensored and the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR).
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Upcoming Events
Free Holiday Skate and Neighbourly Shindig!
Friday, December 13, 2019
Save-on-Foods Memorial Arena
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Marche du Tissus Reims is a trade show which illustrates a wide range of products and services such as fashion fabrics, kids fabrics, ladies fabrics, interior fabrics, curtains decoration fabrics, quilting fabrics, patchwork fabrics, carnival fabrics, fabrics lining, fabrics duplication, and much more.
Timings09:00 AM-06:00 PM (expected)
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Entry FeesCheck Official Website
Participants1000 - 5000
100 - 500 Exhibitors Estimated Count
Category & TypeTrade Show
Apparel & Clothing
Editions30 Nov 2019
27 Apr 2019
01 Dec 2018View More
28 Apr 2018
Frequency Bi-annual
Next edition likely in May 2020
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Stoffen Spektakel NetherlandsTop Rated 46 events listed
User Community [ Users who have shown interest for this Event ]
Abdul Gafoor Mohammed nazer
Business at Nazer steelsChennai, India
Director at FACILE INTERNATIONAL TRADING (INDIA) PVT LTDChennai, India
Businessman at AlramqNajaf, Iraq
Mansour Mohamed Mansour Mohamed Elsaify
0835 at United Import & ExportKananga, Democractic Republic Of Congo
Managing Director at Moussa ShopTangier, Morocco
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Director at PerennialLahore, Pakistan
seyadu mohamed abdul azeez
chairman at g.s.reception hallColombo, Sri Lanka
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28 Apr 2019
Exhibitors Profile
Leading exhibitors will gather here and showcase a wide range of products and services such as Fashion Fabrics Kids Fabrics Ladies Fabrics Interior fabrics Curtains Decoration Fabrics Quilting Fabrics Patchwork Fabrics Carnival Fabrics Fabrics Lining Fabrics Duplication Haute Couture Exclusive Fabrics Upholstery Foam Oilcloth.
Venue Map & Directions
Reims Exhibition Centre
Site Henri-Farman, 51100 Reims
Featured Hotels in Reims
Novotel Reims Tinqueuxfrom EUR 108
Les Suites Champenoisesfrom EUR 170
Logis Hôtel Au Tambourfrom EUR 91.5
Best Hotel Reims La Pompellefrom EUR 54


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Latest update December 6th, 2019 12:59 AM
Feb 28, 2011 Dem Boys Seh, Features / Columnists, News 0
Nuff thing happen this weekend and all of dem happen quiet—real quiet. Dem boys hear how Desi Bouterse come in and he guh to New Thriving fuh dinner because dem didn't have food in State House. And was wuss yet next door at Sam.
But wha happen to Pegasus? Is when de man guh to New Thriving that dem boys really mean fuh boycott Pegasus.
But that is another story. Of course everybody vex when Badal buy de place and forcing some people fuh build de Marriott.
But dem boys want know why Desi coming suh often. Is only de other day he come three times. Dem boys try to find out if he been to de Caricom summit in Grenada and nobody can't seh. Of course as a Caricom leader dem boys think that he been but dem ain't see no contribution from he.
He is a nice man and he really like Guyana but dem boys want to know why people mixing he up in all kind of thing. Dem boys seh that is he who got Guyanese crossing de backtrack because even he does use it.
De other day Bharrat guh to reach he at de back track but Desi cross wid de boat. Was confusion fuh reach de man to give he a proper welcome.
One man seh that Desi coming suh steady to check out he land at Pradoville because he buy a piece and he intend to put up a house near to Bharrat.
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Dec 06, 2019Ogle Masters and Success Masters will clash in a T20 fixture on Sunday at the Ogle Community Centre ground, East Coast Demerara. The game which is set to commence at 10:00hrs is being sponsored by...
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I have long argued on this page that collective psychic destruction occurred in the Guyanese nationality decades ago. In... more
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National Instruments-NI Systems Recruitment 2017 for the post of RF Algorithm full time Intern for B.E/B.Tech/M.E/M.Tech graduates at Bangalore Office.The detailed eligibility and application process are given in below.
National Instruments-NI Systems Recruitment 2017:
|Job Role
|RF Algorithm full time Intern
|Rs. 30,000/Month
|Job location
|Last date
Detailed Eligibility:
- MTech/M.E (Preferable), BE/BTech, from a top engineering school in Electronics and Communication Engineering, Telecom, or equivalent.
- Strong hold on RF Communication and Digital Signal Processing concepts
- Should be self motivated, have passion for working on products and be technically sound in their relevant areas of expertise.
- Taking initiative, being a self-starter, and working independently
- Working effectively in a group development environment
- Ability to learn and adapt
Job Description:
As an Engineering Intern in RF Communication Algorithm team you will be responsible for design, development, implementation, modification and testing of Algorithms and other necessary software components in the NI RF Measurements Software involving majorly physical layers of Wireless Cellular and Wireless connectivity standards that runs on NI Vector Signal Analyzer and Generators.
How to apply for National Instruments-NI Systems Recruitment?
Interested and Eligible candidates can apply for this position by the following link as soon as possible.
To Apply: Click here


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Marine is an umbrella term. As an adjective it is usually applicable to things relating to the sea or ocean, such as marine biology, marine ecology and marine geology. In scientific contexts, the term almost always refers exclusively to saltwater environments, although in other contexts (e.g., engineering) it may refer to any (usually navigable) body of water.
Marine or marines may also refer to:
Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit is a 1996 book written by Tom Clancy about the inner workings of a Marine Expeditionary Unit.
Marines, also known as a marine corps and naval infantry, are an infantry force that specializes in the support of naval and army operations on land and at sea, as well as the execution of their own operations. In the majority of countries, the marine force is part of the navy, but it can also be under the army like the Troupes de marine (French Marines) and Givati Brigade (Israeli Marines), or form an independent armed service branch like the United States Marine Corps and Royal Marines.
Historically, tasks undertaken by marines have included providing protection from war while at sea, reflecting the pressed nature of the ships' company and the risk of mutiny. Other tasks would include boarding of vessels during combat or capture of prize ships and providing manpower for raiding ashore in support of the naval objectives.
With the industrialization of warfare in the 20th century the scale of landing operations increased; this brought with it an increased likelihood of opposition and a need for co-ordination of various military elements. Marine forces evolved to specialize in the skills and capabilities required for amphibious warfare.
Exploration is the act of searching for the purpose of discovery of information or resources. Exploration occurs in all non-sessile animal species, including humans. In human history, its most dramatic rise was during the Age of Discovery when European explorers sailed and charted much of the rest of the world for a variety of reasons. Since then, major explorations after the Age of Discovery have occurred for reasons mostly aimed at information discovery.
In scientific research, exploration is one of three purposes of empirical research (the other two being description and explanation). The term is commonly used metaphorically. For example, an individual may speak of exploring the Internet, sexuality, etc.
The Phoenicians (1550 BCE–300 BCE) traded throughout the Mediterranean Sea and Asia Minor though many of their routes are still unknown today. The presence of tin in some Phoenician artifacts suggests that they may have traveled to Britain. Some scientists speculate that they voyaged all the way to Central America, although this is disputed. According to Virgil's Aeneid and other ancient sources, the legendary Queen Dido was a Phoenician from Asia Minor who sailed to North Africa and founded the city of Carthage.
Mineral exploration is the process of finding ores (commercially viable concentrations of minerals) to mine. Mineral exploration is a much more intensive, organized and professional form of mineral prospecting and, though it frequently uses the services of prospecting, the process of mineral exploration on the whole is much more involved.
Exploration (also known as Voyages of Discovery and Christoph Kolumbus in Germany) is a simulation strategy game designed by Software 2000 in 1994.


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New Regulations Permit Employers to Offer Limited Wraparound Health Coverage as Excepted Benefit
April 29, 2015
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When Can An Adversary Overcome A Litigant's Work Product Protection?
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Lawyers For Closely Held Corporations Must Consider The Privilege's Ownership
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Can A Trademark Case Defendant Avoid Privilege Waiver After Its Executive Testified That Its Lawyer "Cleared The Name For Us?"
October 2, 2019
Discussions of that strategic considerations involved in class action defense.
Regulatory, enforcement and litigation insights on consumer financial and fintech issues.
Insights on issues and trends that impact investments in healthcare and life sciences businesses.
The McGuireWoods Client Resource Center provides ready access to forward-looking thought leadership, tools you can use to heighten efficiencies, and capabilities we invest in so you will not have to. We welcome the opportunity to partner with clients on value-added strategies. Let us know how we can help.
What people in government say and do can have a profound impact on your organization. McGuireWoods Consulting is structured to work with government effectively through a potent team of federal, state, local and international government relations professionals. In addition, clients reap invaluable benefits from our infrastructure and economic development, strategic communications and grassroots mobilization services.


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Brought to you by this conversation that is currently in my News Feed:
J to L: OMG guess what
L to J: What?
J to L: Brittany Murphy died! She had pneumonia or something I think.
ETA: I knew about Brittany Murphy, just to clarify. This question was inspired by my friend.


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1929-D 25c PCGS MS65+ FH ex: D.L. Hansen
Better Date with Full Head
Lot Closes: Sunday, December 15, 2019 9:10 PM EST
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