89 year old Robert Mugabe got sworn in this week in his 7th
term as President. After winning an “election” with 63% of the votes verses
Tsvangirai’s 37% and also garnering a house majority in parliament, we just
have to concede that after all these years, old really is gold in
Zimbabwe. Mugabe has been party leader
of the populist Zanu-PF since the 80s, his most renown land reform policy
returned land to millions of citizens who were previously squatters and sealed
ownership of Zimbabwe in the indigenous people of Zimbabwe. So. Never mind that self rule didn’t turn out
as rosy as the people had hoped, they owned the land they live on and that is
ALL that matters.
It’s such a simple, trifle thing and yet even the most so
called educated intellectuals and political pundits just don’t get it. Even if
Mugabe were 180 years old, way past dead and barely breathing, he could still
cling to power and win an election with over 60% of the votes because the
people own the very land they live on from now into eternity and that is all
that matters to them.
Land is the sole determinant in all of Africa, it is the
land that caused the scramble and partitioning of the continent and it is the
land that will forever remain the source and fuel for conflict. It is land that brought colonial settlers here
and it is land that freedom fighters fought for. It is land that gives us life
and a livelihood and it is land that African governments must redistribute in
an equitable, fair and considerate manner.
It’s no secret that the people of South Sudan had been
tormented in a 21 year old war because of the resources found on their land.
You would expect that after gaining independence and becoming Africa’s youngest
nation State that South Sudan would quickly encourage her people to re-settle
far and wide and reclaim the land so that they can develop together. But this
is not the case. South Sudan’s government suffers the exact same problem every
single post-colonial country suffers to date. There are elements that will
always be unwilling to cede power by allowing the people to take up what is
rightfully theirs. Some of these elements may come from Khartoum, but many of
these elements resist from within.
If black gold is the poison that keeps Abyei near the border
with Sudan aflame with violence, then the people of Turkana County are facing
an impending doom. In 1961, one of the largest oil deposits in East Africa was
discovered to rest beneath northern Kenya. It was of course kept a secret then.
Ever since, the Northern territories have deliberately been under developed and
marginalized; this is a region that sees perennial conflict. Northern Kenya is
so lawless that the Government of Kenya visibly struggles with cattle rustlers,
bandits and brazen border crossing terrorists. Earlier this year over 100
policemen were killed in an ambush in Baragoi district while tracking supposed
cattle rustlers.
To kill 100 Kenyan armed policemen takes not just the
biggest cajoles one could ever possess, but it also means that the attacking
party was far better armed and prepared and certainly outnumbered the
policemen.
More importantly, it means that right within our country is
a militia that completely refuses to recognize the law enforcement authority of
the Kenyan police. Chances are, the policemen met with the law enforcing
authority of some mini-lord out there in Baragoi.
In Northern Kenya, administration police die like flies.
They are under equipped, lack resources and outnumbered constantly. As soon as
the Kenya government announced last year that Tullow Oil Company had discovered
oil in Turkana County, there was a marked increase in arms being distributed
among the people there. Note: it took
the Kenya government 52 years to tell the people what exactly they were
standing on. During which time, certain members of government and highly placed
politicians had bought entire sections of land in Turkana at throw away prices.
The place is dry and arid, so at the time it would have been a bargain to
anyone.
Now the people are wiser. They now understand why for
decades they were left to starve under the blistering sun, why only NGOs would
give a hoot whether they lived or died why there are hardly any schools, no
electricity, no roads and no security. They finally understand that the very
ground that they stand on is the reason why their numbers have deliberately
been depleted through conflict, starvation and disease and why the rest of the
country couldn’t care less. And they are arming themselves.
It’s almost hilarious for Kenya to declare that it is set to
be an oil producing country within a few years. To successfully produce oil
from that part of Kenya is to eliminate or subdue the threat posed by the
people who rightly live there and those people are armed. What is likely to
happen is a long protracted conflict, whether political or physical; one that
will make the journey to those petrodollars difficult, painful and quite
possibly bloody.
When we say oil producing nation, I don’t think of Saudi
Arabia where social services and amenities mean that nobody is homeless or
going hungry or unable to seek medical attention. No. When we say oil producing
nation, I think of Nigeria, where the disparities between rich and poor and
ethnic communities and religious groups is so dark and distinct that Nigeria
has homegrown terrorist groups.
We, as a country, did not take stock in the run up to
independence on how we would actually manage to live together, all 120
different ethnic groups, within one border and share resources. We allowed a
handful of politicians decide to impress deeper a colonial divide and rule
doctorate, to sew together haphazardly linguistically and culturally similar
groups so as to reduce the national ethnic tally to a strange number of 47 and
to totally ignore ancestral land rights and concerns over much needed resources
necessary for the sustenance of entire groups of people.
Every 5 years thus, we allow these same Frankenstein- like politicians
or their psychopathic offspring to hem and haw at whatever little sense of
nationhood that we have, we let them use our ethnic differences to polarize us
so that they can be elevated into power in repeated fiascos we call elections.
In the event that you live in an area where the law is not the Kenya police,
you can be sure that every 5 years, those parts of Kenya run red with blood
because of these “leaders.”
It’s funny how Kenya refuses to learn from Zimbabwe thus.
Seeing as these political leaders desire to rule forever, all they need to do
is to restore the land to the people. The fact is, once that is done, even if
the people aren’t well off, they will still give you their vote. It will be an
effortless victory. KANU can then rule for 100 years as President Moi once
said, and do so without need for bloodshed. Painless, effortless, power.
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