Jake The Pundit

I am totally incensed by the endless to-and-fro harangue between Kenya’s mainstream press and our politicians. It is a no-holds-barred and, by all measures, quite infantile campaign of misinformation, mudslinging and denigration. There is no question that both camps are the most loudmouthed in society but when they take to it in the fashion they have adopted over the last fortnight, a whole nation is the worse for it.
My rant is not so much about politicians as it is about the media. We all know our politicos are no more than a bunch of self-righteous buffoons. After all, the media never tire of telling us this. But when the media pretends to be this hounded Goliath at the end of a tether pegged to the ground by this puny self righteous wannabe David, I am not taken in. We have all heard about how the media stands gagged by Poghisio, Michuki and Karua. And those irritating voice clips playing on Kiss100 ostensibly addressed to Kibaki who, am sure Carol Mutoko will concur, never will and never has tuned in to the station. What we haven’t heard is honest or objective debate about the contentious bill. The scribes are so much obsessed with this senseless foaming-in-the-mouth outpouring of vitriol that they have forgotten their primary and foremost duty: to give us the story. Not just give us the story, but to tell it objectively and from both sides of the argument. For there is always the other side. Always. It doesn’t matter if you are the victim. We have as much right to hear Poghisio as we have of hearing the head of media owners association.
It is the media’s duty to keep the society informed. It is not, as they would have us believe, a favour they dole out to society; we pay dearly for it. Sometimes we pay in cash and more often, in pure psychological torture. Kenyan journalists, with a precious few exceptions, are most amateurish. The ones in the print business have no clue about proper grammar and basic punctuation while the anchors on TV and radio have a pronunciation that makes my high school English language teacher turn in her grave every time they take to the mike. Don’t get me started on the clichés that I last used whilst wooing my first blubbery girlfriend in grade six or the stale internet jokes that have no bearing to the way we live in Kenya. And, when you have a whole week to write a 300- word article, how does it end up full of typos and sentences that snake their way through 3 dozen words with no commas, hyphens colons or semicolons? Even more exasperating: how does the editor okay the articles? And, this is what befuddles me the most, all this in the age of multi-language spellcheckers, online thesauri and broadband internet. But I guess a fake American accent and a penchant for outrageous behaviour is all that one needs to pass auditions in our media houses.

I have been posting views at the BBc's World Have Your Say blog, this is a sample of what went on during a recent session. One of the talking points was Zimbabwe as you'll find below. I was particularly galled by one particular bloke

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South Africa has announced it’s border with Zimbabwe a disaster zone as more cholera sufferers flood to get treatment. A couple of hours later Robert Mugabe announces that Cholera has been contained he said “Because of cholera, Brown, Sarkozy and Bush want military intervention. Now that there is no cholera, there’s no need for war.”

There are also growing worries in the UK of mass migration of Zimbabweans to the to flee the Cholera epidemic. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has warned that some people were obtaining fake passports from neighbouring countries where citizens do not need UK entry visas.

Meanwhile as calls grow for intervention in the DRC, The UK and Germany resist any military involvement. These are only two examples of problems Africa is hoping the world will solve. But why should it? Why should we still care about Africa? If Africa can’t solve it’s own problems, should the rest of the world still care?

In his blog Peter Goodspeed writes how Africa is waiting for a miracle. His name is Barack Obama. But even before that has Africa always ben waiting for a miracle? Goodspeed says,
Once described by then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair as “a scar on the conscience of the world,” the continent has been promised help for generations, but still suffers from civil wars, tribal conflicts, epidemic diseases, malnutrition, poverty, a lack of opportunity, crime and corruption.
The phrase ‘promised help for generations’ grabbed me. Is the world then making promises it can’t keep?

COMMENTS:

1 roebert December 12, 2008 at 11:45 am

I find it bizarre that the UK resists military intervention in Zimbabwe, whereas it was so keen to rush into Iraq with the US. Rather than washing its hands of the Zimbabwean problem, the UK should wake up to the fact that Mugabe is the end result of British interference and intervention in White ruled Rhodesia. In this interference and mistranslation and misrepresentation of the Zim situation, the BBC was more than merely helpful, it was complicit, right up to the skewed reporting on White owned farms and the so-called land reforms.

Military intervention is justifiable in this case because the people of Zimbabwe are too worn out and dispirited to act in their own behalf, and because military action in Zim need not amount to much more than a show of force to get the lunatic Mugabe out. 100 SAS and two tanks will do it.
2 VictorK December 12, 2008 at 12:51 pm

The bail-out would have been futile without serious reform of uncompetitive working practices within the auto industry. The unions refused to accept those reforms. Many of the banks that were bailed-out should have been allowed to fail; the only bail-out should have been for some deposit-holders.

Brown and Sarkozy should shut up about Zimbabwe, which is no concern of theirs. South Africa and Zimbabwe’s other neighbours are the only countries with any standing regarding this. They allowed this situation to develop and they should be the ones to bear the burden of their collective failures, from cholera to refugees. The West must learn to mind its own business.

‘The world’ doesn’t care about Africa. Saudis, Pakistanis, Indonesians, Brazilians, Malaysians, etc have their own problems to deal with, besides lacking any tradition of international humanitarianism. What’s meant by ‘the world’ is philanthropic, officious, self-righteous, imperialist-minded Western liberals. But Africa isn’t their responsibility and shouldn’t be made a burden on Western tax-payers. Africans demanded independence; let them enjoy it. Otherwise they can apologise for having been wrong and ask to be re-colonised and governed properly again. A continent as rich in minerals as Africa shouldn’t be the permanent nightmare of disease and poverty that it is.
3 VictorK December 12, 2008 at 1:46 pm

@roebert: as despotic as he is, Robert Mugabe is always described as an ‘intelligent’ man, and he’s certainly that compared to the general run of African leaders. I’ve always wondered at his hostility to successive British governments (he’s always been intelligent enough to make clear that he has no problem with the British people and has the greatest respect for the Queen!). I used to dismiss it as mere rant, until I read the following article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2000/may/09/zimbabwe.comment

Mugabe perhaps does, after all, have reason to resent the British government. The article has more than the ring of truth, since there’s no way that Mrs Thatcher would simply have paved the way for a Marxist, even a popularly elected one, to come to power. The British government had the intention, but lacked the will, to fix the election that brought Mugabe to power.

In fairness, the rush into Iraq on the heels of the US was more by New Labour than by the UK. As to the reason for it: politically-motivated humanitarianism, as you’d expect from our corrupt New Labour regime. Blair & Co. were naive enough, I believe, to think that if they used British blood and treasure to help Muslims (and to a rational mind liberation from Saddam and the Taliban are both benefits) he would permanently secure the Muslim vote to his party. Experience (the master of fools) has taught them that Muslim loyalty is to other Muslims, even if they happen to be Saddam or the Taliban, and never, under any circumstances, to non-Muslims.
5 Jake Wahome from Kisumu - Kenya December 12, 2008 at 1:56 pm

It is almost farcical to notice Western leaders foaming in the mouth at the death of some few hundred Zimbabweans. I agree, it is totally unacceptable that a human being should die of preventable and easily curable disease. But this is not just happening in Zimbabwe, thousands die daily all over Africa from malaria, Aids and tuberculosis. I have not heard anyone talk of war till now.

Mugabe is no saint, if he was the least bit decent he would have resigned by now, but the troubles bedeviling our brothers in Zimbabwe are not his alone. The British sabotaged the Land Reform programme before Mugabe took to the violent takeovers. Nobody talks about the British complicity in the tragedy that is today’s Zimbabwe.

I was bemused as well to notice my own Prime Minister, Raila Odinga call for armies to save the cholera stricken Zimbabweans. Mr. Odinga has my utmost respect, but since he entered a clearly lopsided power sharing deal with Kibaki, he has been trying - sometimes too hard; to appear the perfect African statesman. I am only afraid that in his own Lang’ata constituency, where arguably the biggest slum in Africa is located, a cholera outbreak is more likely than not. I would hate to see him having to eat his own words
7 John in Salem December 12, 2008 at 2:13 pm

The bailout is money down a rat hole. Had the CEO’s not been called out on using corporate jets to go to the first hearing they would have continued to use them without a second thought. They don’t get it and never have. It’s too bad that the people who work for them chose to hook their futures to a dying industry but that was their choice. Everyone has known that this day might come but they were willing to gamble that it wouldn’t and they were wrong.

The nations of Africa have more than enough of everything they need except the will to get their act together and that’s something that no one can give them.
8 VictorK December 12, 2008 at 2:16 pm

The jury in the coroner’s inquest on Jean Charles de Menezes (the man shot dead by police who mistook him for a terrorist) have just given their ruling: an open verdict and not, as the police would have liked, a verdict of lawful killing. The coroner had prevented the jury from bringing in a verdict of unlawful killing.

This is an important decision for the UK. The instincts of the New Labour regime naturally turn towards setting up the apparatus of a police state in Britain (ID cards, holding people without charge, laws invading the private sphere and obliterating traditional liberties, etc). The police have been politicised and corrupted by New Labour. Police Chiefs have openly lobbied the government and supported government policy. They have on several occasions prosecuted the innocent and left unprosecuted the guilty, in the knowledge that the government would welcome the political advantage of particular prosecutions or failures to prosecute. They have acted as the security arm of the government in harassing and arresting an opposition MP (the British government has the impudence to rave at Robert Mugabe).The de Menezes inquest has exposed the police as liars and incompetents, who it was revealed acted collusively after they murdered an innocent man to get their stories straight (shamelessly, they defended this as routine practice).

We in Britain need to forget the police state in Zimbabwe and build on this verdict to roll back New Labour’s incipient police state right here.
11 gary December 12, 2008 at 2:45 pm

While the US auto industry has been in worsening health for 35 years, I find great humor in comments that ascribe its imminent demise as due to the evils of unionism, idiocy in upper management, superiority of foreign technology, or any other such narrow view. The facts are, that while all these views are reasonable, they are incorrect.
US autos have become big and fat in lock step with their owners. As they have done so, their fundamental purpose has been effectively submerged. Convenience has become necessity. The entire US economy is geared (intended pun, though not a very good one) to ad libitum transportation. Indeed, the automobile has become the very image of freedom cast in steel. It represents the second greatest expenditure, after housing, for the average US family, and almost everything about it is based upon lies!
The truth is almost too simple to say! Cars are metal boxes equipped with wheels and a motor. They move people form place to place in modest comfort pretty much at the whim of the driver. Any additional characteristics are merely marketing flummery. A simple analysis of any US citizen’s daily travel would indicate living closer to work, school, or shopping constitutes the best solution; but a really good second choice would be mass transportation of some sort!
Have you discovered the answer yet? We Americans are looking at it square on!
We can afford transportation, but we can’t afford the hype that comes along with it!
In final analysis, the fashion of automobiles makes about as much sense as did the fashions of codpieces, ostrich plumes, or as did my favorite Doug Adams objects of idiocy; digital wrist watches!
Sorry, for the inconvenient length of this rant!
g
12 Jake Wahome from Kisumu - Kenya December 12, 2008 at 3:40 pm

@VictorK,
It seems we meet again. I read your reply to my comment the other day. I am sorry my comment implied you were on the side of liberals fighting terrorists. This notwithstanding, I still retain my stand that your outlook and language are way too prejudiced and the same applies to your comments on today’s topic. I am indignant and even ashamed that black Africa is bedeviled with the problems it has and that it remains at the bottom of the ladder in economic development. But to see things in the same light as you do is both insulting and hypocritical. How could you call colonialism “proper governance”? Let me teach you a thing or two about what colonialism was about.

In the late 18th and early 19th century, European powers that had exhausted all their natural resources in the rush to industrialise, discovered a continent lush with natural splendor and a vibrant culture. What a boon! Over the next century, they pulverized the continent; carting away the able bodied to serve as slaves in their estates and factories, whilst shipping away our natural wealth free of charge. They justified their injustice by claiming that we were no more than a bunch of savages. When Africa did get independence, things were not helped by the crop of leaders that took power from the colonialists. They were the worst of dictators who pandered to the whims of the former colonialists who let them cling to power and commit atrocities as long as they did not upset their trading interests or lean too closely to the Soviets.

The losers, of course, were poor ignorant black citizenry. But it is no use bemoaning what was. Africa can only rise to the level of the rest of the world at her own initiative. No amount of “humanitarianism” by “Western Liberals” will solve our problems,I agree with you on this.

But let me correct you, Africa is not awash with minerals as you suggest. My own country Kenya has, at present, very little of them. Our economy mainly depends on agriculture and tourism. Today is our National Day ; “Jamhuri Day” and we are celebrating 45 years of self governance . Whether it galls you or not, what Kenya has achieved over the last 6 years in terms of human and economic development, is way beyond the achievements of a century of colonialism. Best of all, Kenya is the only black African country that makes its annual budget without factoring donor support. And last year, that budget was close to 10 billion US Dollars. Maybe not much by your standards but am proud and will continue to be in the future. And pray, don’t count yourself a burdened western taxpayer on my behalf. I would rather that your western government would remove its unfair trade barriers and subsidies so that my father, who raises a couple of dairy cattle in his retirement at the foot of the scenic Nyandarua ranges, can have a hope of selling his produce in the same market as your farmers.