Locusts and Pandemics

The East African region has been slammed in the past year by seemingly Straight-Out-Of-The-Bible plagues of locusts, floods, and now, the Global Covid19 Pandemic. It’s also been a tough year for civil society that for years, has suffered from both chronic and inappropriate funding. The sector suffers from the prioritization of project based financing over core support, the latter being the lifeblood of civil society. Funding also tends to be truncated and with fixed short term project cycles that don’t lend themselves to effective social change, or movement building which requires longer and more flexible time frames.

And while almost all NGOs are struggling to survive in a time of shrinking funding because of Covid19, local NGOs have been the clear losers in the funding for Covid response. A startling statistic from the Center for Global Development showed that only 0.07% of the US$2.5 billion allocated for Covid19 response has ended up in the hands of local non-governmental organizations.

The Covid pandemic has reinforced the need for the philanthropy sector to go back to basics. Some key concepts gaining prominence in this time include trust based grantmaking; the call to support civil society and other associational life in the form they see best; a shift from project based to core and operational support; adopting of nimble and responsive support that allows for adjustments in the external context. It has indeed been sobering for the sector to realize that for some, even a pandemic was insufficient to shift pre-agreed on log frames, and theories of change!  Other promising trends include a move to longer and collaborative partnerships as opposed to the more contractual project based financing.

Deficits:

In addition to Covid19, the Black Lives Matter Movement has caused a seismic shift in many sectors. The East African philanthropy sector is not exempt.  If we pan out, and look at the entire so-called “Development Sector”, some of the criticisms levelled against the sector are that the sector can be guilty of perpetuating post-colonial practices, or as Firoze Manji says of continuing the “Missionary position”.  This critique, mainly levelled against Western, or Western facing INGOs, is that through their work, they center (mainly) Western societies as the ideal that African societies should “develop into”. As a consequence, the work and efforts of the sector end up being an effort at panel beating African NGOs and societies from what  “isn’t” (in Africa) to what “is” (in Western Societies).  Equally sobering is the critique that INGOs also operate and reinforce specific power structures through their work, where on one side, you’ll typically have Western (or Western facing) donors/ INGOs with all the knowledge. And on the other side, you’ll have local NGOs (“grantees”) often positioned as supplicants waiting to be capacity built, funded and generally whipped into shape.  It’s this centering of development on the “white gaze”, a phrase coined by the late Toni Morrison (may she rest in perfect power), and also echoed by others like Dr Robtel Naijali, and Dr Mordecai Ogada, that we are called upon to change, if the sector is to serve the communities it was ostensibly created to serve.

Some of the work that we are urgently called upon to do includes de-racialising development, and this moment presents us an opportune time to examine our practices. The sector needs to urgently reform its practices including a shift in power, attitudes and grant making practices.

In Parting: The Parable of the Sower

Growing up, I remember my incredulity when I was told that growing crops in straight lines was something that was “brought by the white man”.  When rather skeptically I asked what we were doing before, I was told “we were planting haphazardly”.  Many years later, I came across the work of Howard Jones who had studied African polyculture, and the ‘discovery’ was that far from being haphazard, this was actually well thought out agronomy practice. And this served as a lesson, as growing up, the visually pleasing straight lines were examples of aspirational farming, and with the more complicated polyculture being something that we needed to develop from. How much soil health, and agricultural productivity have we lost as ‘modern agriculture’ tried to ‘modernize’ African agricultural practices I wonder?

And that’s a good way to end this #ShortTake.  How much are we losing as a sector as we try and ‘develop’ society on our terms, and not communities? How much NGO vibrancy is lost when we try and mold NGOs into a certain image? We truly need to find out what our True North should be, else no amount of recalibration of compasses will fix what ails the sector.

Formerly known as Enkare Nairobi

Despite being the birth place of Wangari Maathai, of being the current host of the UNEP, we treat our natural resources in the country the way public officials treat our hard earned money. With contempt, and as a never ending ATM. Despite being perennially squeezed for water as a water scarce country, we still mismanage the fragile ecosystems and water bodies we currently have with politicians engaging in an infantile populist chicken/ egg argument over whether forests bring rain, or rain brings forests (correct answer: forests bring rain).

The notion that we are but custodians of this land- and that we hold it in trust for future generations is a central tenet of what we say we stand for as a country. It’s enshrined in the Constitution, and with responsible planetary stewardship a corner stone of most religious belief systems.  Unfortunately, this principle didn’t survive first contact with the venal kleptocracy that is Kenya. Our rivers, rhinos, forests, elephants, beaches, sand, coral ecosystems are all under siege.

We have a penchant for constraining things that were always meant to be free. But nature has a habit of cracking down on those who thwart her. She’s resilient- “able to absorb and accommodate future events in whatever unexpected form they may take." But she’s not infinitely forgiving. She scoffs at tenderpreneur’s elastic compromises, and in the past, we’ve seen her fight back at the people who deigned to constrain her.  In a sense, nature has been fighting back as NEMA and the rest twiddled their thumbs. The current clearing of riparian land is a belated move to rectify sins of omission and commission that have been piling up over the years. While NEMA is late to the show, nature has been working on clearing this up herself and on reclaiming what was never ours to build on. We watched as developers erected buildings and homes on riparian land and in typical “shauri yako” fashion, built culverts designed to shepherding the river into other peoples’ property! Pity. 

Beyond the multiple damming and diversion of the river that’s been happening and causing flooding, the encroachment of riparian reserve has been disastrous to the urban ecology of Nairobi. The riparian reserve is more than an aesthetic requirement. Riparian zones carry out soil nitrification amongst other things,  and off balance leads to eutrophication and deoxygenation of the riverine system.  A whiff of the Kirichwa River provides ample proof that all’s not right in the Nairobi river system. Our rivers are full of trash and debris and some- like the Ngong River are nothing more than open sewers. It’s not entirely surprising because where a government connects less than half the resident households with sewer systems, waste has to go somewhere with the resultant rivers being nothing more than fetid and murky cesspools brimming with plastic bags even months after the plastic ban.

The Caveat Emptorness of it all:

Living in Kenya sometimes feels like being in the Thunderdome in Mad Max.  The utter lack of safeguards for citizens shows us that in almost all interactions, the citizen is on her own. While I applaud the demolition of property that was wilfully and deliberately built on riparain land by those who knew it was public land and perverted the system to do so, it's utterly deplorable that *some* innocent Kenyans who bought land in good faith have now been left holding the bag.  The news clip of homeowners in Green Park in Athi River whose houses were being demolished was gut wrenching. They’ve been left holding mortgages that they still need to pay for over land that was never theirs to own and my heart goes out to them. Meanwhile- the developers who bribed and built their way into this mess are still laughing all the way to the bank. It’s a situation that needs urgent rectification- the demolition of houses should be accompanied by an EACC investigation of how those multiple permits came to be issued. It also behoves NEMA to publicly publish a list of what is public land (which all riparian land is), and to show what actions have been taken against employees who participated in the creation of this unholy mess.  

This information asymmetry in a perennially corrupt environment lends itself to a situation where the innocent are hoodwinked, and the corrupt find safe harbour for their pillage and robbery of public land. It’s an untenable state of affairs. Ultimately, for longer lasting and more just solutions, we need more safeguards and constancy from the Government.

#SwitchOffKLPC Hashtags and social movements

KOT is characterised by many things. It’s rambunctious, boisterous and decidedly disorderly. It’s sometimes funny and whimsical.  It’s also on occasion misogynistic and homophobic. And every so often, we have woke KOT.  And while “twitter activism” has been dismissed in many places (think Peter Kenneth’s presidential  “twitter votes”), its mobilising and rallying power has definitely changed how online Kenyans think and interact with the state and authority. Twitter’s ability to democratise information has forged commonalities in Kenyans where through the hyper-connectedness of Twitter, common outrage against inflated power bills has led to Kenyans mobilising around the #SwitchOffKPLC hashtag.

Hashtag  activism isn’t new in Kenya. There have been some successful hashtags e.g. the #MyDressMyChoice which was able to halt the noxious trend by  PSV operators of assaulting women for “dressing indecently” and also translated to offline prosecutions and convictions. Some of these hashtags were short lived and ephemeral e.g.  #SomeoneTellCNN, the #UhuruChallenge or even the #DeportKoffiOlomide that faded off KOT radar after objectives were met (and perhaps also due to an admittedly short KOT attention span!). Some e.g. #WhatIsARoad #OverlapKE have morphed into longer lasting hashtags that are still being used to call attention to two of the biggest aggravations facing Kenyan commuters- the deplorable state of our roads, and overlapping menaces who make commuting a daily nightmare.

Kenya Power and power

By all accounts, KPLC is the piggy-bank of choice for government regimes, officials and connected Kenyans. It’s a feeding trough that is fed by hard earned Kenyan cash- much of this non disposable income for Kenyans that are barely making it.

The #SwitchOffKPLC campaign has also given Kenyans a small peek behind the curtains at the corruption machine that runs and controls most of industry and politics in Kenya. “KOT police” have been instrumental in providing information that answer Eric Wainaina’s question of who is to blame for the rot in our country. What’s clearly obvious through some of the information that is coming through is that this corruption machine neither sleeps nor slumbers. Like a perverse virtue, this looting machine is patient, and unkind. It always protects the benefactors, and unless something changes, will probably always persevere. It’s also proven to be very innovative - see e.g. the third party token vendors who saw an opportunity to make money through alternative paybills and were able to capture 35% of the token market.

What we should however never lose sight of is that these staggering fortunes made through bribery of KPLC officials, creation of fake fuel shortages, and  siphoning of money are crimes that have very real victims behind them. If you trawl the lead campaigners/ founders of the movement @apollomboya  @jerotichSeei and supporters’ twitter timelines, tweets tell stories of predation by an uncaring, indifferent corporation that has used its position as a monopoly to brutalise and bilk Kenyans of their hard earned and scarce coins regardless of the human cost. They have shown zero compunction in over billing widows and grannies, and businesses on the edge. 

Social Movements & Social Media

For Kenyan civil society- especially those working in transparency/ accountability and energy sector, the campaign offers an opportunity to make change in the notoriously corrupt energy sector. And while I don’t think that online campaigning will (or even should) replace traditional civil society, supporting the #SwitchOffKPLC campaign would bolster the efforts of the movement and their own work in energy justice. There are perhaps lessons to be learned from how the #BLM movement has been able to grow from a twitter hashtag to one that has galvanised (and some say rescued) the civil rights movement in the US. From all accounts, it was able to morph into a social movement because of its ability to tap into grassroots organisations, NGOs and other associational life to leverage its online popularity into offline work in the judiciary, churches, schools etc. Mr Mboya’s public interest litigation, online research and activism by Ms Seii   and others has translated to offline gains where consumers have earned a reprieve from inflated bills through the court system.  For civil society activists, the campaign could serve to connect energy justice, anti corruption and transparency and accountability work. 

It’s proving that it can help counter sponsored disinformation and provide alternative narratives that amplify universally recognisable truths- that the kleptocracy that rules Kenya is literally and metaphorically killing us. It also offers an already beleaguered civil society a chance to re-moblise its base, and work to chip away at the age old corruption looting machine we’ve been fighting for a long time. 

xxx

Wakanda movements?

Erik Killmonger in Black Panther is arguably *the* most nuanced, incandescent antagonist/ super villain in the comic world– perhaps only rivalled by Heath Ledger’s Joker. To a child of a (former) colonial state, I identified and understood his struggle. I got Erik. I was rooting for him! But in the end, I was totally disappointed by just how badly women fared at his hands.

If we use Black Panther as an allegory of women’s role in Kenyan social justice movements, the disposability of women in Erik’s quest (death of his female partner, the choking of the heart shaped herb guardian), are disappointingly familiar.  Contrast this with T'Challa's Wakanda where women are integral and vital. It was so refreshing to see women taking crucial and non-supporting roles. In Wakanda- women were core to the struggle. Generals, tech geniuses, spies, rulers. They served and they saved. 

And looking inwards at our non-fictional nation of Kenya, it should serve as a cautionary tale to all the social justice movements that purport to be working for the greater good of society. Where are the women in your ranks? How are they being treated? Are we sanctioning- and casting out misogynists? Are we actively working to counter anti-female rhetoric and misogyny in the rank and file of the organisation?

If not, the movement is at its heart an unjust movement. And unjust movements bring forth unjust outcomes where they simply populate the same unjust structures with new faces.

Her Dress, Her Choice

Gendered Citizenship

Where citizenship can be defined as the process of exercising rights and protections; and the expectation that specific obligations (by state or other parties) shall be fulfilled, it’s obvious that in Kenya, not all citizens are created equal. Despite the recent hue and cry over the “plight of the boy child”, it’s clear to even the most cursory observer, that women and girls constantly get the short end of the citizenship stick. National data on school attendance, political leadership, corporate leadership etc. all attest to the fact that it’s still easier for the man/boy to make his way in Kenya than for his female counterpart.

We see this differential quality of citizenship every day where e.g. assault of a male is seen as deserving a response by the authorities towards the perpetrator, but an assault of the female first requires a discussion on what the female was doing/ how she was dressed before she’s accorded the moral right to a response by the authorities towards the perpetrator. This is seen in all walks of life- from the humblest back street to parliament where the quality of female leadership and the regard it’s held in is still very, very degraded.  

Patriarchal Anxieties

It’s in this context where you find our female leaders are still not accorded the respect and rights that their male counterparts fully expect. It is in this toxic environment where Duale feels fully comfortable perpetrating what could be considered workplace harassment of female MPs. His attempt to dress his fellow female MPs echoes and validates the louts and criminals that were stripping and assaulting women who were “indecently dressed” not too long ago.

His patriarchal anxieties over fellow parliamentarians’ bodies are misplaced and particularly insidious as they try and limit female agency in the one place where we fully expect the full assertion of rights and expectation of equal treatment by and for all members of parliament. Make no mistake about it- this wasn’t an off the cuff remark by an avuncular MP who’s upset by the “tight” trousers that are being worn by his colleagues. On utterances, Foucault cautions that we should focus on the statement not just as a descriptive utterance, but as a discursive event.  Our clothing and dress is very much structured and shaped by power. A parliament that’s still largely in the control of men has dressing standards that are shaped, determined and dictated by men.  Where equally powerful women, and other marginalised populations are able to penetrate these spaces, they bring the potential to expand and de-familiarise the notions of what ‘acceptable’ dressing is. It is this discomfort with the shifting of boundaries that leads to these utterances by Duale and his ilk.

Break down that statement down, and you see it for the non-benign statement that it is.  It’s an argument that’s meant to discomfit fellow parliamentarians and reduce them to the sum part of their female bodies.  It serves as a reminder to female MPs that their bodies are under observation, and that the tightness of their trousers makes them even more observable. It seeks to rob them of agency over one of the most basic choices- that of how they dress. It deliberately seeks to disadvantage female MPs as once “tight trousers” are tabled as an acceptable point of order, it is but one more thing that the female MPs have to navigate in addition to the other more pressing and legitimate business that brought them to parliament.

Fear of a Female Planet

Duale’s problematic statements are but more of the same of what African women faced during and in post-colonial Kenya. The colonial encounter’s obsession with the black female body has been well documented where the clothing of Kenya was considered an integral part of ‘civilising’ Kenya. The colonial trope of the unclothed female body as unclean /unwell still persists in independent Kenya where post-colonial agents like Duale continue in this tradition of monitoring public exposure of female bodies.  

Women in Kenya occupy this paradoxical space where we’re both custodians of all that’s virtuous and decent, while still being morally polluting Jezebels (unless guided by men) - truly a Schrödinger's cat that’s simultaneously madonna and harlot. This fear of the ‘unclothed’ female form, the differently clothed female form is rooted in a fear of female sexuality and ultimately fear of female freedom.

It’s however a fear that has no space in a Kenya whose Constitution accords both men and women equal rights, and it especially has no fear in parliament where we fully expect grown women and men to do grown people’s business. If someone’s clothing offends Duale, he should simply avert his eyes. He has no absolutely no business in the ‘tight’ trousers of MPs.

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Atieno Yo!

The Good Life

The pages of Drum or True Love offer a peek into the dreams and aspirations of the Kenyan woman. With stunning shots of exquisitely furnished homes, interspersed with mouth-watering food, and articles on how to attain a beautiful (read, fit) body at home with equipment easily bought at Nakumatt, the magazines both create and curate Kenyan aspirations and hip Kenyan aesthetic. 

This lifestyle with its parquet wood floors, beautifully wrought burglar proofing, high thread-count cotton sheets, and faux-aged sculptures from Maasai markets by necessity require high maintenance. Someone needs to dust and polish the wooden floors, dust the ornaments- something that is inimical to also working out, maintaining that high-octane career, entertaining friends with tastefully prepared in-season & sustainably produced food. A calculation of the person hours required to maintain this lifestyles underscores a central truth: Kenyan domestic prosperity is contingent on the use of lower-income persons’ labour. This is a life that requires a steady supply of cheap and low maintenance labour. The domestic worker is a necessary input into what’s needed to maintain and preserve the employer’s valuables including children, expensive furniture, and ultimately peace of mind from the time consuming work of running a household.

Feminisation of Domestic Labour  

Women make up the vast majority of domestic workers. The female domestic is called on to perform and enact the ‘feminine’ role in the household due to the feminisation of reproductive labour in this sector. This life, a part relic of colonial master-servant relations perpetuates notions of what it means to be a successful employer couple. The idleness of a colonial wife was the mark of a successful colonial husband. He was expected to produce enough money to allow the employment of a coterie of servants. The wife would ensure that the household ran smoothly- without the back-breaking labour required for this of course. In contemporary Kenya, the nanny-cleaning lady-gardener-guard are also deemed as requirements to ensure that the two-income family is possible, without sacrificing the comforts owed the successful man (cooked & hot food, clean house, changed diapers etc).

Consumption/ Work Dualism

The dualism inherent in paid domestic labour is seen in the conception of the house/ home as both public/ private places and spaces for either production/ consumption. For the employer, the home is a sanctuary from the job and state. It’s a space where the employer consumes the fruit of their labour- the flat screen TV, a good book and clean children. It’s the rewarding space where one can purchase both the time and activities for relaxation. For the domestic worker, this is a productive space where labour is traded for a pay check. It’s also a place where the domestic worker also trades in their identity as part of the procurement of their labour. It’s often expected, especially for the live-in domestic worker, that she shall trade in her identity as an adult wage earning Kenyan to a kinda-sorta family member (albeit one who is never present in family photos or events). She’s expected to be asexual (no visits from husbands/ lovers) and her dietary preferences are subsumed by the employers’. While expected to cherish the employer’s children as her own, she is however expected to eschew her familial ties - e.g. the domestic workers’ children are only noticed when they are the underlying cause of a labour interruption “Her child got malaria so now I don’t have a nanny”.  

Workplace Violence:

In Kenya, and elsewhere, this sector is characterised by being very competitive, little regulated and attempts to unionise workers have had little to no traction. Domestic work is characterised by low pay, long hours, job insecurity and high vulnerability which translates to high incidents of workplace violence. The issue of sexual violence against domestic workers presents one of the more egregious cases of victim blaming- even in a country where victim blaming is rife. At bridal showers, wisdom on how to manage house and husband is dispensed with the proper and wifely management of the domestic worker taking centre stage in this curriculum. The bride to be is usually given life hacks on how to ensure that the domestic worker ‘stays in her lane’. “These women will eat you out of house and home if you’re not careful” the bride to be is told (“Lock the store and only remove the tea bags/ sugar you need for a few days”). These Jezebels are also out to entrap your husband and future sons. Care must be taken it’s emphasised, to ensure that she doesn’t sway those hips as bent over, she washes the floor (General advice: “Buy a mop”). If you ever unexpectedly walk into a furtive and quickly interrupted embrace between spouse and domestic worker in the kitchen, fire her immediately.

While there have been gains in labour law favouring domestic workers, power relations are still skewed very much in favour of the employer. While the statistics on this are notoriously hard to come by, anecdotally one assumes it’s prevalent in the sector. It’s quite usual to hear that many men’s first sexual experience was with a domestic worker. It would be highly unusual that these sexual interactions were always consensual from the perspective of the domestic worker.  Domestic workers however have little room for redress or relief, and a study by Oxfam on the working conditions of women drawn from the Mukuru informal settlement seems to validate this. The study showed that attempts by domestic workers to get redress faced obstacles where employers corrupted officials (e.g. chiefs & police) and/or the workers were asked for payment by the police to initiate an investigation.  

While the courts have started logging some impressive victories for domestic workers, a central truth (paraphrasing Audre Lorde) is that the personal and the political should illuminate all our lives. Just societies invariably emanate from just workplaces and just homes. A fair & prosperous Kenya, where citizens aren’t deprived of the rights due them, is dependent on the majority of Kenyans abiding by the spirit and letter of the law. In this case, this entails paying their domestic workers minimum wage, NHIF & NSSF, a valid contract, sick leave and time off. Anything less is not only illegal, but also guarantees the continued existence of slums and unjust society.

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Driving Key Populations Further Underground

Data gaps & inconsistencies matter. The notion of who is counted, and when they’re counted, is a political act. It comes bundled with the motives, blind spots, capacities and values of the persons designing the data collection exercise, and the collecting and analyzing of this data. Often, the decision on what groups are counted determines access to services- or lack thereof- and it’s not a stretch to say that marginalization and exclusions in the ‘real world’ tend to be mirrored during the data collection. The accuracy of the data, as witnessed by the prevalence of ghost plants and contested elections also underscores just how political data is, and differences over numbers and people is one that is played out over and over again.  

In Kenya, this contestation is currently being seen in the fight against HIV/ AIDS. Some activists and NGOs working in this sector contend that key populations - namely Female sex workers (FSW), men who have sex with men (MSM) and persons who inject drugs (PWID) are grossly under-counted. The Government on the other hand disagrees and thinks that this number is grossly over-inflated.

One of the most important tools in combating HIV/AIDs, is captured in the aphorism “Know your epidemic, know your response”. A useful tool in gathering epidemiological data is the Integrated Biological and Behavioural Surveillance (IBBS) Survey which has received good reviews on usability and adaptability for local conditions. The Government of Kenya proposes to use the IBBS to figure out the true numbers of key populations in Kenya. All textbook perfect and laudable. Except! They want to use biometric authentication  for this survey for the IBBS.

Say what?!!!

Assuming that this is all on the up-and up, this is utterly wrong and misplaced from a data & health privacy perspective for all persons involved.  As a general rule, biometric data should only be collected when absolutely necessary and isn’t excessive for achieving the stated purpose. The collection of biometric data should also be done in a way that minimises potential risk to the relevant persons. One senses that the Government is struggling to understand and work through the ramifications of creating patient friendly laws and services that don’t violate patients’ rights. Yesterday, the law courts struck down an ill-advised directive by the president, ostensibly meant to improve services, which called for the collection of information on HIV+ children & pregnant mothers by Government officials including chiefs (!). Last year, the High Court struck down provisions of a HIV AIDS  law that allowed disclosure of HIV/AIDS status by health care workers and declared it unconstitutional and an infringement on Kenyans’ privacy. To be fair, the issue of responsible data collection is a global challenge, and not just a Kenyan one. It is however clear by now that the collection of (physical) biometric information requires a high standard of care. If say, the database is hacked, unlike address or phone, one cannot change one’s biometric data once this is compromised.

And while all my privacy and health rights hackles rise at the above concerns, what should perturb all of us is that this is being done in a context where homophobia and negative attitudes against sex workers are rife. Criminalisation of sex workers & LGBT persons is on the increase in East Africa, and is very much present in Kenya. It is therefore extremely worrying and troubling that the Government would propose to carry out this exercise that would provide personally identifiable information on key populations. Even more worrying is that this seems to be going on with the support, or at least the acquiescence of the Global Fund who have from the very beginning been key allies in the use of a human rights approach to treating and working with HIV/AIDS. This idea should have been shot down from the very beginning, and I’m aghast that it has gone as far as it has without the Global Fund weighing in. As designed, this will increase discrimination against the very population it’s meant to serve, and drive key populations away from services. The very opposite of what this IBBS survey is intended to do.

And to come up with a policy that drives Kenyans away from much needed services is both a great pity and shame.