Empowerment 'harambee' is nothing but political fraud

Someone high down here - not up there, is taking me for an irredeemable fool. Because you can’t be high up there and treat fellow countrymen like garbage. Like thoughtless cows. Like riff-raff.

History records that at independence in 1963, the balance in the National Treasury was modest. Jomo Kenyatta aptly explained this to the nation thus: "But you must know that Kenyatta alone cannot give you everything. All things we must do together to develop our country, to get education for our children, to have doctors, to build roads, to improve or provide all day-to-day essentials. I give you the call: Harambee!".

And with that Kenyatta and Kanu had coined a phenomena that would dwell among us for years. Hundreds of schools were built in the harambee spirit. Every school had two streams, from Form 1 to 4. The two were simply known as Form 1 “G” and Form 1 “H”. “G” stood for “Government”. and “H”  for “Harambee”. Admission into the two streams was determined by how one performed in CPE (Certificate of Primary Education; under 20 marks and you were assured of a slot in Form 1 H, above 20 and you wound up in the prestigious “G” stream.

Today, many in the working population in their 50s comfortably relate to the harambee spirit as the social-economic leveler of yore. But please, not any more!

Well, out of lack, we shall continue holding harambees to give “a decent send-off” for our kith and kin, to defray medical bills, to ensnare colleagues into marriage through weddings, send relatives abroad to study and so on. But harambee for “development or women empowerment" is to take us back to the caves.

A noble idea without accountability as well as effective checks is just an open invitation to abuse. And harambee was and has been abused. In the '80s into the '90s, harambee was politicised and entrenched in the national political psyche. At independence, honest men and women held harambees to pull together in building schools, hospitals and dams. In the '80s, '90s and today, crafty men and women hold harambees to pull us apart.

During the Nyayo-era, harambee was a matter of political life and death. Participating in a harambee determined your political career and future. President Daniel arap Moi used Harambees as a “Nyayometer”. (A Nyayometer was a secret, complicated instrument used to measure the depth or hollowness of a person’s loyalty to the President, to the Nyayo philosophy of peace, love and unity and allegiance to the ruling party, Kanu).

Whenever Moi went for a harambee, the common villager would suffer irreparable damage and harm. If a harambee was scheduled to be held in a school in Kilifi District, the Provincial Commissioner (PC), Coast Province, would send word to all the District Commissioners with a target sum for each one of them to be forwarded to the PC to be “donated” by the PC during the President’s harambee. The DC would in turn instruct all the District Officers in his district, with targets, until the whole thing cascaded to the chiefs, their assistants, village headmen and finally, the villagers. During the harambee, all politicians worth their name, or even without any name, looked forward to shaking Moi’s hand as they handed him their contributions. All the while smiling from ear to ear. All elected leaders, without exception, did not have a choice but attend the harambee. Anyone who did not contribute was “anti-maendeleo” and “serving foreign masters”, “to destabilise the country”.

Runyenjes Member of Parliament Kamwithi Munyi (1988-1992) and former Cabinet Minister for Cooperatives knew a thing about harambees and the timing thereof. Apart from other strange mannerisms, the man always wore two watches, one on each hand, lest he should, God forbid, arrive late for a presidential harambee! Or horror of horrors, miss one altogether because of a malfunctioning watch! How could he trust one silly watch? While we can say Mr Kamwithi was a little weird, the truth is that all Kanu operatives lived in mortal fear of the throne. The clearest way to pledge your loyalty was to show up in all harambees while literally weighed down by the weight of real cash, shake Moi’s hand and hand over the money. After all, blessed is the hand that giveth.

In 2000, Sirisia MP John Barsa Munyasia, Muriuki Karue (Ol Kalou) and others met a delegation of Zambian MPs. The Zambians were shocked that Kenyans still depended on fundraisers for development. They shared their Zambian Constituency Development Fund (CDF) model, which Munyasia and Karue modified and customised into the current CDF Act, including the 2.5 percent of the national budget going to the constituencies. This effort was meant to cure the madness of harambee. Munyasia describes the current con games disguised as empowerment as “Kumusilisili”, a Luhyia term describing meaningless children’s games.

Along the way, something else crept into harambees. At first it was a rumour but it was later confirmed. Because no one had money to give away every weekend, the chief guest would announce the final tally of the money raised. After much applause, he would call the recipient, say the head teacher of a school, aside. He would advise him/her to hand him back the money collected “just to show it” at the next harambee and then return it. And so he would go away with the money and pretend to donate it at the next harambee. And so on and so forth. I smell a similar but rotten rat in some of the ongoing empowerment harambees.

A research published in 2001 by Transparency International is a dissection of the harambee concept from 1980 to 1999. A casual glance at the findings is sufficient to make one very angry at what this regime is treating its citizens through the empowerment charade every weekend. The characters are different but the script is the same one observed during the Nyayo era. Kenya Kwanza mandarins are falling over themselves to be seen at the deceptive empowerment harambees.

Just as in days of Kanu proper, nobody is supposed to inquire into the source of the donations and how a woman is empowered when she goes home in the evening with Sh76 from the harambee or even the correlation between realistic earnings of big contributors and their lavish harambee contributions. Who in their right mind gives away their salary or profit from legitimate business to strangers every weekend? And these fellows have already forgotten that a major cause of the Gen Z Uprising was the flaunting of opulence and primitive accumulation of wealth by core members of this regime.

Harambee was fashionable in the '60s. It served its purpose and is now otiose. Like the Volkswagen Beetle was the real deal in 1934, it is ridiculous to present that model today in the face of present sophisticated automobile engineering.

Deliberate frameworks of women empowerment are fairly easy to comprehend: The Three-Dimensional Model suggests that empowerment occurs at three levels: the individual (micro), the interpersonal (meso), and the structural (macro). The 6S's Women Empowerment Model of India are: Shiksha (education), Swasthya (health), Swavlamban (self-reliance), Samaajik Nyay (justice), Samvedan (sensitivity), and Samta (equality).  The bottom line is about women taking control of their own lives, rather than being seen as passive recipients of help. It should never be about political philanthropy. We are not looking for a generous president. EACC, step forward!

Which women empowerment model is being championed by this regime? I will not even mention that the climax of these harambees is when a presidential aide picks on a female MP, openly ogles at her, talks dirty about her body, makes her turn around to showcase her bottom and then directs her to dance for him. Maybe the bottomline here is to achieve a national orgasm.

It is unbelievable that these characters even have a pedestrian interaction with the Constitution of Kenya 2010 which mothered devolution in order to put an end to skewed allocation of national resources by the executive. The late Kijana Wamalwa - peace be upon his name - would say, “l see my brother Professor Kithure Kindiki wallowing in the miasma of deceit.”

Mr Kuteteis a lawyer