Category Archives: Mundia Mundia Jnr.

DDT WAR: BUSH CALLS FOR A MALARIA ‘RESOLUTION’

Many Africans appreciate the involvement of US President W. Geroge Bush in the fight against Malaria. From treating mosquito nets to indoor residual spraying, all may mean well. We need to tackle Malaria beyond the ‘ US-Arusha Declaration for Africa’ against the deadly Malaria.
 What Africa needs in a ‘concrete solution’ to this epidemics and not Bush’s ‘doctor-to-patient-get- well-soon’ manipulations. Certainly we all ought to be abreast with information on Malaria in relation to mosquitoes. Many of us do not understand the behavior of mosquitoes thus rendering the fight against Malaria difficult.

Again, as we all take ourselves into the lives of mosquitoes and the disease that they transmit, it is unfortunate that we have not been able to understand our immediate neighbor, the Mosquito, who always knocks on our doors for a cup of blood at night as she pays back with Malaria.

In their book, Mosquito: A Natural History of Man’s Most Persistent and Deadly Foe’, by Andrew Speilman and Micheal D’Antonio the writers go swatting mosquitoes as the vampire-types carry some 100 nasty diseases and parasites that dispatch about one person every twelve seconds. They describe her as an “apple-seed sized creature that even harasses dinosaurs and have affected both human health and hearth than any other insect plagues combined’.

Ever since their nifty names from Aedes aegypti to the Culex pipiens and Anopheles aquasalis that sounds Lingala all have defied Kenya ’s ethnicity in the approximately 42 tribal cultures. This should then make us yearn to understand mosquitoes with their wild behavior for the sake of humanity.

Unfortunately, the Western world, including U.S.A., have become the world’s largest mosquito guardian and it is time that we re-introduced a local religious ‘great mosquito crusade’ and make malaria benign for good. As the mighty winnowers become sexually active, they suck more blood for eggs and vomit Rift Valley fever and malaria into our veins.

Ay! They do not digest blood with water (plasma) in it but suck blood, secreting the (water) from the blood in their pinkish urine. Again, like in an action packed movie, the mosquito takes away the soul this time round in a deadlier and real way.

Their prowess makes them land on walls and the average time spent before and after a blood meal is about 20 minutes on our watches. They even beat their wings more then 250 times a second and fly about 4.8 kilometers (3 miles) an hour as they protect their approximately 2,500 species in the world though most don’t suck blood. This then should be our mundane lore on deadly mosquitoes, as human deaths become the entertaining ode to the mosquito.

In another recently published book by Dr. Donald R. Roberts, an entomologist and professor of Tropical Health at the University of the Health Sciences, U.S.A, the author urges that “outbreaks of preventable diseases is as a result of inefficiency by organizations such as the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) and others that have authority and regulatory control over critical pubic health issues but lack responsibility and recognition of the public health consequences”.
Thus what ought to change, according to Dr. Donald is to “rest authority in the right hands of World Health organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that have responsibility for public health”.
  

For example, late last year (September) the WHO malaria division head Dr. Arata Kochi, announced the decision to return to science-based malaria policy and permit the use of DDT (Dichlorodiphenyl-trichloethane) for indoor spraying but which has been ignored by man counties including Kenya . Fortunately Uganda ’s President Yoweri K. Museveni and Uganda ’s Ministry of Health have allowed re-introduction of DDT’s indoor residual spraying (IRS) supporting Dr. Arata’s “courageous responsibility to this public health menace that has since overruled the 30 years of anti-DDT prejudice at WHO”.
  

As for Kenya, where over 75% of residents of North Eastern province and Kilifi regions live below the poverty line with 90% of the two populations unemployed and where the residents’ resistance to disease is concerned, lack of prevention of mosquito breeding and control mechanisms have negatively influenced the well being of such populations. Thus DDT not only has the potential to prevent malaria but also control the spread of Rift Valley fever, Dengue fever, Yellow fever among many other diseases transmitted by mosquitoes as vectors.
  

Surprisingly and fatally, the Ministry of Health, even with the consent of WHO to use DDT, chose to lax its muscle in terms of controlling breeding and mosquito movement. The consequence of flooding would be to create breeding grounds for the Mosquitoes. Moreover it is upon the MOH to come up with a disaster and management policy on health through community participation as a security issue.
 

 Even before then, disease outbreak during flooding ought to be classified as a security risk as in terrorism and which needs proper preventive medical armory.

For the Rift Valley fever bunyaviuses from animals are picked up by a biting mosquito to be readily injected into the human victim. For malaria sporozoites reach the human liver where they reproduce forming new merozites that enter the blood stream then burrow into the red blood cells causing bleeding. This happens at an interval of 48-hour cycle when new blood cells are infected and destroyed. Worse still death quickly follows when the two infections attack the brain. Other public health diseases such as cholera and typhoid only exacerbate symptoms leaving children below 5 years and pregnant mothers to approach their deathbeds sooner.

  As a matter of concern, the Ministries of Agriculture and Livestock are being over-indulged by the Ministry of Health due to poor preparedness of preventable and readily controlled public health issue. Previously the MOH had made errors including brainwashing Kenyans that the recent outbreak of disease in North Eastern province had been the deadly Ebola fever. This gave room for the infection to spread when diagnosis and treatment of Rift Valley fever were delayed. Also, the MOH lacked a reliable data collection and surveillance team to gather information about public health diseases associated with flooding. Most importantly the MOH had not ensured that there was proper infrastructure to control disease as a primary necessity. It only opted to ‘put the cart before the horse’ by treating rather than preventing spread of disease.

 Thus, the MOH ought to re-educate its pubic health staff on diagnosing; therapeutics and proper treatment in order to save innocent lives at the same time intensify its public health programs even when there are no outbreaks of diseases. Taking further grassroots research on disease patterns in relation to current climatic and environmental changes may help.

Changing climactic patterns, extensive human migration and proper screening of those leaving one geographical area to a different one apart from human and livestock vaccination that ought to be parameters to help us make decisions on health and disease. It is upon us to choose to move away from health policies on public health that propagate medical-based genocide with many preventable deaths as statistics for publication.
  
  It is unfortunate that the Ministry of Health had to spend billions of shillings to help control and manage the Rift Valley fever. Unpreparedness had been the major culprit in as far as managing disease is concerned. With the start of the rainy season there are chances that there would be outbreak of Malaria due to adverse climatic changes that exacerbate breeding grounds for vector borne insects such as Mosquitoes that transmit Malaria apart from Rift Valley fever and other diseases. As for the means of controlling the spread of Malaria the Ministry of Health ought to come out clear to create awareness about Malaria to the public before the disease kills many including children below 2 yrs and pregnant women. At the same time there have been many misconceptions about control measures and management of the public health disease. As a consequence the untimely ban on DDT (dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane ) in Kenya last year by the Ministry of Health was the deadliest weapon of mass warfare in the fight against global malaria. The ban was influenced by the donor community and politicians with vested interests. Towards the end of last year Kenya got Ksh. 1.2 billion ($ 16 million) for the malaria programme that included availing Artemesinin Combination Therapy (ACT) with a conditionality not to use DDT. Previously the hurly-burly ban of DDT was a result of subceived chemical warfare using insecticides. Before World War II chemical that were lethal to insects were made in laboratories at the time chemical warfare agents were developed. Thus the perceived worry built on the premise of nuclear warfare made some ethologists and conservationists initiate a cold war against medical and malaria researchers. In the book ‘Silent Spring’ by Racheal Crason, many unscientific and unresearched issues have been raised about the perceived massive toxicity of DDT on the environment and life, including human life, ad nauseum. These deceptive and false claims have allowed many lives to be lost due to the malaria epidemic in Kenya and in the African continent at large.

Fortunately, well known policy observers like Marjorie Mazel Hetch, editor of a scientific magazine, have challenged the WHO to back the use of DDT to help stop malaria. Mazel has opined the adversities of jettisoning public use of DDT. The September 29, 2006 issue of Executive Intelligence Review details the intention of the World Health Organization through its announcement on September 15 that it will back DDT spraying on the inside walls of houses to kill or repel malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Previously, the WHO’s 30 year policy against DDT had created loopholes for unscrupulous environmentalists, pharmaceutical companies and politicians to capitalize on the malaria epidemic that kills one African every 30 seconds, and debilitating 500 million people a year killing women and children in Africa . Apart from DDT being inexpensive and cost effective it kills and repels mosquitoes. DDT is estimated to cost about $5 (ksh 360) per average five-person house hold once or twice a year. Uganda has already agreed to continue with its 2007 indoor spraying program through the Health Ministry as per the Sept 20,2006 report. It went ahead to note that DDT would help reduce infant mortality from the current 88 out of 1000 births to 10. Hitherto, 800 Uganda children die a day from malaria. South Africa resumed the use of DDT in 2003 and within two 2 year the incidence of malaria in the worst-hit province of Kwa-Zulu Natal had fallen by 80% malaria cases and death dropped by 93% by 2005.

The latest WHO malaria campaign stresses that no environmental effects have been noted when small amounts of DDT are sprayed on the inside of house walls. The WHO campaign aims to ensure prompt and effective treatment of the infected through availing medication coupled with indoor residual spraying with DDT and the use of bed nets treated with a long lasting insecticide. Thus the merits and benefits of using DDT override those unscrupulous activists and environmentalist with a hidden subceived agenda for their selfish propaganda. Scientifically, DDT has been proven not to be carcinogenic, mutagenic or teratogenic to man and that it ‘does not have a deleterious effect on fish, birds, wildlife or estuarine organisms’. This is courtesy of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report. An example is India where $165 million (ksh11.8 billion) was extended but India was told not to use DDT. The same was done to Madagascar and Eritrea . Unfortunately 50 per cent of mortality and 60-80 per cent of morbidity in Eritrea is the result of malaria. The UNICEF funds were only for insecticide-treated nets. This lopsided international pressure to stop public use of DDT has only exacerbated death of innocent children and women of Africa yet Pharmaceutical companies are allowed to make profits out of this scourge. German chemist, Othmar Zeidler, who in 1874 produced some ‘material’ that was later named ‘DDT’ in 1939 by Switzerland ’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Paul Muller, must be the ‘saddest soul in Heaven’. Maybe his vision was that DDT saves more millions of lives than any other man-made chemical.

The WHO stated that chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticide like DDT ‘killed more insects and saved more people than any other substance’. Researchers and human volunteers have ingested as much as 35 grams (about 3 table spoonfuls) of DDT a day for two years without having adverse effects. To prove to sophists that DDT was harmless to humans a US scientist Dr.Wayland Hayes ingested a tablespoon of DDT (about 12 gms), swallowed and took a glass of water before presenting a talk about DDT lacking toxicity to vertebral animals including humans. Not only will DDT help control malaria but would help manage Rift Valley fever,typhus, yellow fever, Chaga’s disease, African sleeping sickness,
 Leishmaniasis, tick-borne bacterial and rickettsial diseases that are a threat to humans.

Selfish propagandists have made companies that produce insecticides that have a short residual action gain massive profits. Many toxic chemicals than DDT, like nicotine, have been scientifically proven to be harmful yet less receive less mentioned among these groups. Many have died of cancer respiratory and circulatory diseases but no one has died due to the use of DDT. The advantage of DDT is that it is a non-contact repellent and a contact irritant to mosquitoes and not human beings. A field study conducted in the Americas showed that DDT residues repel 95 to 97 percent of major malaria mosquitoes. Interestingly, international law specifically allows use of DDT for public health as approved by the Stockholm convention on persistent organic pollutants (‘’Pop’s Treaty’’). Despite this approval, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), UNICEF and the World Bank still campaign to phase out public use of DDT. The notorious World Bank gives developing countries conditions not to purchase or use DDT. This is elitist medical neo-colonialism and against the basic human right to life. 

In addition, Dr.Gilbert L.Ross of the American Council on Science and Health pointed out that ‘extensive scientific studies have not found any harm to humans, even during the massive overuse of DDT in agriculture in the 1950s and 60s’. In fact this massive use of DDT helped 36 former malarious countries totally eradicate the disease. The U.S. National Academy of Science stated in 1970 that, ‘to only a few chemicals does man owe as great debt as to DDT’. But is Africa paying dearly for the selfishness of propagandists with death caused by Malaria? Iit is time that our country Kenya took the initiative to prepare to face the Malaria epidemic that may break out soon due to the expected heavy rains and increased temperatures brought about by climactic changes. Africa as a whole should not be used as a textbook study field for Malaria statistics.
  
  Wouldn’t the availance of DDT tyo Africa, for indoor residual spraying, be the solution for Africa?
  
  
  Mundia Mundia Jnr,
  (Clinical Physiatrist)

‘Secret army’ preparing for war in Kenya

By Robert Oluoch and Mike Pflanz in Iten
Last Updated: 1:15pm GMT 14/02/2008

An army of young warriors is being secretly armed and reinforced in remote areas of Kenya’s Rift Valley, preparing for war if the country’s knife-edge peace talks fail.
Elders have organised thousands of men from the pro-opposition Kalenjin tribe into militia units, each split into marksmen, foot- soldiers, armourers, drivers and cooks.

For the full article, please see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/14/wkenya114.xml

Sent by Mundia Mundia

BURNING THE KENYAN FLAG IN OUR HEARTS

Date:  Mon, 18 Feb 2008 02:58:55 -0800 (PST)
From:  Mundia Mundia

Some PNU affiliated crooks in the name of ‘Democrazy’ found it right to symbolically ‘bring USA and Britian’ down. May be their egos got pampered but they still remain BIG losers with less to offer as solutions to our crisis. Personally as I look upon the colors of my country’s flag (not the flag of my nation), I observe hatred, darkness, hopelessness and a near death situation camouflaged in black. I see white (not as peace) intertwined with oozing blood dripping on our green motherland with intense multi-segregation.
 
 I feel like changing and transforming the colors of my flag that only remind me not of peace, love and unity but the never ending struggle for occupancy, power, fights land and other resources with tribalism being the minefield that struts the ownership. The current turmoil that inheres in our country (not nation) only put a powerful finish to nothingness in the previously ended farcical elections. Even as our eyes and hearts get heavy with pain, still.
 
 A temptation for our souls to go native strongly persists. Our different ethnic backgrounds further clank against one another as we get lost in the welter of self-war. Instead of moaning and forgiving, our ethnic gape keeps on widening apace as more lives get snuffed. I blame not ordinary citizens, but the tribal hatred that remain shell-locked on our flag.
 
 The colors of progressive segregation and persecution that the British colony left behind for us to transform. From tribalism to disunity, the British also left behind the bleeding colors that still haunt us so hard.  But we refuse to ‘see hard’ and admit. It seems our stale historical vanity would remain hooked in our hearts. This crushing condescension, even as we spurn our furloughing Kenyan flag, the periodic hiccups of helplessness every other election year would only make us be historical prisoners of our bitter past and always on each others’ nerves.
 
 We need to transform the clawing colors of our flag but remain symbolic in meaning and interpretation of our historical pat.
 
 Certainly as I look upon the clawing flag the shield and spears remind me of the never ending war and struggle for re-independence against fellow citizens. The colors bring forth a symbolic acid slur even as I sourly sing the national anthem. I only get relief after falling half headed when I hum the last verse.
 
 And as I contemplate about the colors, symbolism and the national anthem, what comes over me is a bundle of historical contradictions inscribed in our constitution and history books.
 
 What Kenyans yearn to have is real peace and truth. Not deceiving elite symbolisms and choruses that only instigate the country to disunity and remind us that in order to ‘gain the rightful and needful’ blood had to spill on the land. 

 Our flag only polarizes the mind as we become intellectually monopolistic and uni-ideological as we seek national justice using machetes, pangas and other crude weapons of human destruction to ‘negotiate’.
 
 The current nationwide wave of revulsion is our unburied scrap heap of our history though we still refuse to influence reason by historical tuition.

 I term this bastardization of our emerging tribal democracy above the din of the current post-election atrocities that run deep in our veins.
 
 But can Kenyans under the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) help broker peace and political deadlock?
 
 Or would our protagonist leaders selfishly bury the impending stalemate in the welter of political muscle and counter-accusations?
 
 For me, the current mediation and dialogue seem to be part of our ‘ambulance politics’ that is our system with extensive analysis paralysis of our foreign arbitrators on the weighty historical manifestations.
 
 Don’t we need a ‘Kenyan Oath of Citizenship’ than to sing to the verses of the national anthem with less innate meaning and observe the colors of deceit on our flag?
 
 When Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, the following lines from the Agamemnon were memorized to help bring back inner solace.
 
 I quote, ‘He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God’. Kenyans need that wisdom.
 
 These words ought to be proclaimed from the roof tops of our heats even as we face the weighty historical challenges that can never be wished away.
 
 As a youth, I fully miss the sheen of the sun of our independence. But, until when?
 
 visit: http://mundia2.wordpress.com

‘HIKA HIKA’ TERRORISTS: THE MOTHER OF THE KILLER MUNGIKI

 Kenyans ought to now understand that ‘fighting’ for our independence was a far more foreign idea from a Nigerian lawyer and the British and which came as  an ‘imperial euphoria for reformed occupation’.
Mau Mau,  as an illegal vigilant group’s intention was to solely acquire and  posess land’ and not to fight for Kenyan’s national independence.

First and standing by at a  carpenter’s bench (Kamau wa Ngengi) Jomo Kenyatta,  as a 14-15 year old young man and wearing a Khaki shirt and a plane in his  hands, was a tribal radical in the making. The thin, lanky young man  had no striking features except his ‘questioning’ eyes. He was born  about the year of the sweet potato (1897) or the year of the jigger  (1898) at Ng’enda ridge, the  year of the jigger Mbari ya Magana (land of Magana), Kenyatta’s  great-grandfather’s namesake.

While  young he encountered Agikuyu ritual and magic. His great-grandfather  was a magician, fortune-teller, healer and practiced witchcraft, though  he was referred as mundu mugo (medicinemen). On several  occasions he could carry the magician-craft for his grandfather apart  from learning the art as part of the Agikuyu culture and traditions.

While at Watson Memorial Church in Thogoto, he did not directly denounce  ‘Satan and all his works’, or renounce strict Agikuyu culture, with  all its tenets.
In 1913, Kenyatta underwent a  traditional circumcision ceremony by the river Nyongara outside Thogoto  with his age-group as Mubengi.
      

Though he was baptized as  Johnstone Kamau, he was (baptized) Kinyata, a Maasai-made ornamental  belt that he worn, after seeking refuge in Narok among his Maasai  relatives to escape press-gang raids imposed by the British on the Agikuyu.
      

On 22nd October 1920, Kenyatta was summoned before the Kirk Session at Thogoto  to be tried by church elders. The charge being that he had been seen  drinking (njohi)  traditional liquor and taking snuff which he pleaded guilty of and later  suspended from Holy Communion.
      

In  the 1920, Agikuyu women had in many cases persuaded their husbands to  take oath and were often very militant. Mary Muthoni’s death  contributed to the involvement of women in the Agikuyu land affair.  They put themselves in danger to steal guns and ammunition and drugs from colonial occupants. There were many instances when they had to  kill the ‘enemy’ to get the precious supplies. They also chose instead to fight alongside the men and many proved themselves the equals of men.
Contrary to previous beliefs,  ‘freedom fighter’ Dedan Waciuri Kimathi, was the chief architect of Mau Mau  oathing that spread to Thompsons Falls and Ol Kalou area. He was the  leader of his oath administration campaign. While at Karunaini School  at 15 years, he had with him qualities and skills of military  organizations. He was circumcised at Ihururu  dispensary (against the Agikuyu custom) at the age of 18 years. He was charged with recruiting vigilant groups of young men (Mungiki) for the armed  struggle.

Come May, 1928 Kikuyu  Central Association (KCA) first published the muigwithania newspaper.  This was after KCA realized that former president Jomo Kenyatta  had a good command of the English language. Previously, Kenyatta had  surprised many, while as a security guard at the municipal council’s  water department he bought the queens language to the ears of the  locals. This is when his political career that lasted for fifty years  was born. Although his first major role was that of an interpreter  before the Hilton Young Commission in Nairobi.

The Muigwithania editor,  Johnstone Kenyatta, was commonly referred to by the locals in Nairobi  as Jonstoni or Joni.
  

But what did Muigwithani  stand for?

The  monthly paper provided readers with a collection of news and articles.  Some about the Kikuyu culture and their ways of life. The paper encouraged the Agikuyu to improve their agricultural methods and to  advance themselves educationally. It was a major voice of the Agikuyu.  Additionally, Jomo Kenyatta used  the paper to emerge as the leader of the Agikuyu.
On the other hand, the KCA was  busy collecting funds to sponsor him for a trip to England.  With a Bible in his hand and soil in the other, he swore before a  gathering at Pumwani that he would not betray his Agikuyu people. He had left for London  mainly to defend the ‘tribal’ land interests. But his host, Ladipo  Solanke, a Nigerian barrister, lawyer and intellectual, was already talking about independence and not the land issue. There was more for him to do than just presenting a ‘land’ petition to the colonial office in London.
On  his return to London from other foreign countries, in 1929, after his  tribal interests were put aside, he wrote an extensive article for the Sunday Worker, the communist party  newspaper in Britain, on 27th October 1929,  entitled “GIVE BACK OUR LAND”.  

Part  of it read; “discontent has always been rife among the natives, and  will be so until they govern themselves-(with their land)”.

When Kenyatta came back to Kenya he had grown from being a Mogikoyo nationalist to a fighter for the ‘tribal’ land of the Kenya territory.
  

   Later, the Daily Worker  published an article by him in January 1930, describing the Thuku Riots  of Nairobi  as a ‘General Strike’. This move displeased the missionaries and the  colonial office. Kenyatta had learnt the art of parrying a useful  weapon in any politician’s arsenal. He had become a ‘real’ politician.  In the same year, 1930, had enjoined themselves in verbal battle with  the Agikuyu. The quarrel was over female circumcision, which the  missionaries sought to abolish. The majority of the Agikuyu fought against this sentence of death on their culture. Kenyatta supported the  majority and ‘female genital manipulation’ (FGM) to the disappointment  of the white men.
  

When he went back to London  in 1932, Kenyatta ran into other political groups like the pacifists, ­though he met Mahatma Gandhi in November of that year, he  continued writing letters to the Manchester Guardian about Kikuyu  land grievances.
While in Moscow, Russia,  at the instigation of George Padmore, he helped Kenyatta receive para-military training and economics at the revolutionary institute.
Later Kenyatta, under the  Stalinist policies in 1933, was forced to leave Russia the same year, he wrote an article in the Labour Monthly, attacking British for  their greed in stealing lands at the Abaluhya in the gold rush of 1931.
  

In Facing Mount Kenya,  in  1938, Kenyatta’s thesis relayed the Agikuyu’s socio-economic systems and their ‘superior’ integrity to anything that the colonial system  could offer.
      

By 1935, Kenyatta had grown a beard and unkempt hair as a gesture of his  support to the monarch and campaigned against the Italian presence in Ethiopia. Meanwhile  in 1938, he wrote, My people of Kikuyu and the Life  of Chief Wang’ombe, a reflective legendary history of ‘his’ people. By 1951,  the radical young men in Kikuyu  land had resolved to settle the score with the British forest through  blood, and Kenyatta bestrode this social force. He became a detainee  and found guilty of managing Mau Mau and  sentenced to seven years of hard labor. Mau Mau at that  time was a very proscribed society.
    

The seven years of loneliness and  deprivation is what brought Jomo Kenyatta maturity including leadership and  politics. As an old ‘Mzee’, he was no longer a tribal radical activist but a shape-up leader with ‘Uhuru na Kenyatta’ as his next agenda to  participate, for the first time in fight for independence.

Dedan Kimathi, the other ‘freedom  fighter’ was brought down by a police constable from his own area; Nyeri away  from Aberdare  forest where his home was. Also, his militant partner, Muriuki KImotho alias  General Tanganyika, was also executed, in 1956 and who lived at the Mt.  Kenya forest. Before his death his troop was identified as ‘Hika Hika’  battalion led by General China.

Another  fighter, Kariuki wa Chegge, who later repatriated from the Rift Valley,  in 1953 to his home area, Murang’a is believed to have planned and  carried out ‘tribal’ battles using guerrilla tactics to great  advantage. He would attack unexpectedly, quickly and move away from the  scene just as suddenly as he had com. His name and presence kept many  ‘guessing’ due to his unforgiving valour. When he died, his other  fighters lost a ‘genius’ in guerilla warfare.

Certainly,  these ‘freedom fighters’ may have been the architects of the now  prescribed Mungiki vigilant group as an illegal self-made battalion of  yester-years.
          
  Regards,
  Mundia Mundia Jnr.
      

FEATURE: ODM – PNU: VALENTINE’S DIVORCE OR MARRIAGE?

In Africa, it  is believed that, “when hyenas stop chewing on a stricken elephants, the beast  rarely gets up again”

It seems the  current political stalemate in Kenya is the shadow of the ‘unmovable beast that  is eating away its nation.’

What if the  Kofi  Annan-led mediation process  fails?

Would the UN  Security Council ask NATO to give temporary assistance to the AU, pending a  full-blown UN Mission’s arrival, including military? Why this questions and  many more?

Remember what  happened in Rwanda! There was a sudden withdrawal of foreign troops and resultant  chaos. Where was the UN, then, to save Rwanda?

Is China  failing Kenya by ‘passively’ helping end the political stalemate? History  reminds the world that China opposed the intervention of the UN in Sudan for  fear of annoying the ‘murderous government,’ from which it bought vast dollops  of oil. Isn’t China guilty for acting a passive perpetrator of genocide in  Sudan?

In ‘severe’  situations, UN distinguishes between two sorts of Security Council resolutions.  “Those passed  under Chapter 6 (six), deal with the peaceful resolution of disputes and  entitle the council, to make non-binding recommendations.  Those under  Chapter 7 (seven), give the council broad powers to take action including  warlike action, to deal with “threats to the peace, breaches of peace or acts  of aggression.”
          

And as it is  commonly asserted that Kibaki’s occupation of State House as president is still  ‘illegal’ and questionable and as the hardline stance by government is sustained, Kenya runs a risk of being ruled by warlords.

This means  that even if the second attempt, after a failed one by Ghana’s president Kufuor, to restore political electoral and historical order and currently  backed by the International Community, former UN Chief Koffi Annan and his team  of Eminent Persons, should not at all fail or else Kenya shall reach a  punctured crunch point in time to come.

Kofi Annan’s  team ought to facilitate Kenya to have a transitional ‘government of national  unity’ which could, in a year or two, hold elections. The International  Community should come in to give logistical and financial support directly or  NGOs affiliated to the mediation process to help save Kenya.
On tougher  grounds, Kenya would need closer foreign military protection and back-up for  the sake of internal and cross-order security.

Why?  Intelligence  forces predict a risk of a politico-economic proxy conflict breaking out  between Kenya and Uganda (and probably Somalia and Ethiopia) due to the  ‘adapted opposition strategies’ employed in Kenya by ODM against government’s  PNU. President Museveni would face the same challenge president Kibaki is  currently facing.

Does East  Africa need UN’s blue helmet forces to secure peace in the region?

To revisit  history, the International Crisis Group (ICG), a think-tank, had warned that the arrival foreign (Africa) troops as peace keepers, especially Ethiopia, may  rekindle Somalia’s civil war. The current militancy is Somalia seems the aftermath  of the pre-meditated warning.

Across the  border, and years back, the last Rwandan military aircraft had chugged  away, the Mai-Mai, a tribal militia came out of the bush. Two hours later,  bullets were flying and the townfolk were fleeing, as Mai-Mai warriors fought members of another rebel group and many were left dead.

Worse still,  the Lendu tribe of Congo had its own  death trap. With painted faces and leaf circles in their hair, they broke into a  hospital near Bunia where many of the medical staff and patients were from the rival Hemas, a tribe allied to  western Uganda.  The Lendu warriors went from bed to bed,  cutting up the occupants. By the time they had dragged out the children hiding  in the roof and torched a nearby village, they had killed 1,000 people.
In Kenya,  after elections were announced several self-made tribal militia clubbed together to try and force out a ‘rigged-in’ leader, Mwai Kibaki, and later on  turned on one another displacing themselves and leaving behind crude weapons of  national destruction and displacement.

On a lighter  note, I refuse to accept that ‘machetes and pangas’ should be classified as ‘small arms’. Should we blame knives, pangas, slashers, sickles, and razor  blades for being weapons that could kill? Or should we change the attitude of  men to de-classify such as ‘small arms.’ This is an issue of attitude and intention and not a matter of transforming an object to be an arm of the mind.

Certainly,  Kenyans have been caught between flexible timetables that the Koffi Annan led team and the International Community have demanded and the depressingly  inflexible record of African politicians, including Kenyan tribal militia  groups, warlords and faction leaders whose sparring has cost perhaps 1,000  lives and displaced 300,000 persons from their homes.
          

The International Community ought to end the intermittent and periodic pillage and  death that is ethnically based.

Reassembling Kenya back to where it was is a daunting task, but it is a task that has to start from somewhere– with the internationally sponsored Kofi Annan-led mediation process and the group of Eminent Persons, including like minded protagonists and political and ordinary Kenyans.
Let us all  avoid overturning the progress made so far and avoid political miscalculations  that endanger national security and stability. We all need to choose to  separate our home-grown centrism or hardline stances from national affairs and sectarian  political party radicalism for the sake of Kenya.      

Regards and Happy Val’s,

Mundia Mundia Jnr.             
       
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