I am one of the many people who were very surprised when I read that the famous political analyst Mutahi Ngunyi had been accused of hate speech.
As I recall, he made two basic accusations, first that the Luo blindly followed Raila Odinga even though he had no economic empowerment agenda for the community.
Second, he spoke of Luo poverty as a fixture of the Kenyan political landscape in a rather contemptuous manner. These may not have been his exact words, but such was my understanding of what he was saying at the time.
I am not sure what led Mr Ngunyi to make such sweeping statements about a community and a region he obviously has only a limited understanding of. But I would insist that he is not the hardcore tribalist many have subsequently alleged on social media. Indeed, he is no tribalist at all.
If you take his writings going back 10 or so years, it is impossible to argue that he is fundamentally a tribal chauvinist. Few writers have been as critical of retired President Mwai Kibaki and incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta as Ngunyi has been in previous years. What’s more, there are numerous articles that he wrote with great affection and respect for Raila.
And so I am inclined to view that statement of his about poverty in Luo Nyanza as a serious slip but not a defining statement of his attitude towards Luos. Basically, he does not really understand the Nyanza region very well nor does he know anything about the region’s economy.
This is one of the abiding tragedies about our country: Even the most sophisticated and widely travelled among us, like Ngunyi, don’t really understand those parts of the country where they do not live and work. And I am fairly sure that before the Nation Media Group recently published the brilliantly penetrating landmark series of investigative articles on how a small cartel of millionaires conspired to destroy the coffee sector during the Moi era, few people outside Central Kenya had any real understanding of the systematic economic marginalization that this region endured in the 1980s and 90s.
The fact is most Kenyans still make a living off the soil and each region has its own dominant cash crop. So, if you can find a way to devastate the agricultural subsector on which they depend, you can effectively guarantee the poverty of a region without taking any outwardly visible steps to frustrate their aspirations for a better life.
The series on the collapse of the coffee sector made it clear that a few “coffee barons” (oddly enough, all from Central Kenya) robbed the Central Kenya coffee farmers mercilessly and impoverished a hard-working and entrepreneurial people.
Well, the news I have for Mr Ngunyi is that the deliberate impoverishment of the small-scale farmers who grow sugarcane in Nyanza and Western Kenya was no different from what happened to the coffee farmers of Nyeri, Kiambu or Murang’a. They are not the victims of what Ngunyi considers to be Raila Odinga’s poor leadership. Instead, they are the victims of “sugar barons” who have ensured their destitution through such techniques as inflated fertilizer prices; illegal "deductions" on their payments for cane delivered; procurement of factory spare parts and other inputs on the NYS scam model (i.e. a spare part that costs Sh1,000 is bought by the sugar factory for Sh100,000).
The barons have also brought the industry to its knees through illegal sugar imports, including the UN-reported KDF collaboration with al Shabaab deep inside Somalia. These are the things that have sunk the diligent and hard-working farmers of the Western region into the most desperate poverty.
Note that in the early years of Independence, when the Luo political titans like Jaramogi Odinga and Tom Mboya were at the centre of power, there was no more talk of "Luo poverty" than there was of Kikuyu poverty: just as the Kikuyu coffee growers were allowed to reap the full benefits of their labour, so too were the Luo sugarcane growers.
I can illustrate my point with a very simple example: On a visit to Central Kenya in the early 1980s, I saw for myself small-scale farmers with approximately 10 acres of coffee were the proud owners of small pick-ups and decent stone houses.
Much the same was to be seen in my own native Nyanza: Small-scale farmers in the neighbourhood usually had personal family cars. In the present day it is unthinkable that any small-scale farmer growing coffee or sugarcane should be able to afford the luxury of a car of any type.
So, if indeed there is mass poverty all over the Sugar Belt of West Kenya, the reason is that the principal cash crop, sugarcane, has been subjected to much the same forces of politically backed corruption cartels that guarantee no matter how hard the local people work, they remain poor.
The difference between Central Kenya and Nyanza is that the latter has been subjected to this kind of criminal marginalization for very much longer.
This is what gives rise to the perception that unless someone from the region rises to the Presidency (whether it be from Western or Nyanza), the cards will be perennially stacked against any possibility of prosperity in this place.
The sugarcane growers are well aware that it was only through Mwai Kibaki’s rising to the Presidency that strong remedial action was taken in the coffee sector. So, they too, following this fine example, increasingly believe that only a President indigenous to the West Kenya Sugar Belt will give their cash crop the same attention.