• Cane poaching is a symptom of the rot that had infiltrated the sugar sector with government knowledge.
• Poaching was just an extension of sabotaging state-owned factories.
Numbers in business hardly make sense to the public other than that they promote or degrade a firm. But not so with firms that are in key productive sectors of a country.
Such firms’ production numbers, profitability and market share status, directly affect millions of dependent people.
In firms that deal in agricultural produce and manufacturing, any slight tingling with their numbers sends collateral benefit or damage far and wide.
It’s not just workers who lose jobs. The most injury is wrought on primary producers and myriad dependents.
A week ago, I blended into what was once Mumias Sugar Factory nucleus and out-grower farms in Kakamega county.
Trudging on mud paths that were once paved roads, I came to terms with what government-cushioned corruption and neglect can do to the people.
For in these mud-paths, now used by oxen-pulled carts, once roared tractors and lorries heavy-laden with cane headed for crashing at Mumias Sugar Factory.
On the outer-limits of the nucleus fields in Matungu and Mumias East subcounties, now recline mud-walled grass-thatched desolate hamlets.
Where there was hearty laughter in bygone times, now there is fatigued silence. It is evening, but hardly any has billowing smoke for signs of food cooking.
Emaciated ragged villagers peep at strangers expectantly.
When they discern nothing of worth, they turn away with a fatalism that only those who’ve gone to hell and back can master. Their livelihoods have been mercilessly decimated by a government they entrusted with their land, produce and lives.
These remnants of 100,000 destitute farmers in good times made Mumias factory process 60 per cent of the country’s sugar production.
The fatalism is harrowing. Barefoot children trek from school in a region once famous for producing “sweet gold”.
For long distances, there are no electricity poles to show the Last Mile electricity project has reached here. Poverty, in its ugliness, is resident here.
It’s the irony of politics that those of lesser resolve always get others to hold the end of the steak, that means the bone. The people of Mumias are victims of sugar political somersaults.
Benjamin Washiali is doing 20 years as MP in the larger Mumias. In 2013, he sprinted from Musalia Mudavadi under the allure of Deputy President William Ruto’s spell, the man of the Last Mile electricity project fame.
You presume his friend could extend a last-mile pole to Washaili’s Mumias abode, but nothing.
Washiali is still spellbound, despite losing the luxury of the National Assembly Majority Chief Whip post.
To his constituents, that was good riddance for they gained nothing by it. Often, personal well-being for those who hobnob with the mighty rarely translates to the “development” they flag out as the reason for their hangouts.
Mumias is a monument of that mournful sojourn.
But perhaps history is rubbing itself off its vestiges: The irony of “being in government” that has condemned constituents to penury doesn’t bother Washiali.
When Mumias was thriving, he allegedly did brisk business. When it began tottering, he would gather hangers-on’s in mock demonstrations against the factory. So much for bad choices.
By 2014, Western Kenya small-scale farmers were the backbone of a $540 million industry that supported two million people.
Then, other than outright vandalism of factories by the politically correct, a disease only then known in wildlife circles – poaching – became the buzzword in the cane business.
When state-sanctioned illegal sugar imports imperilled farmers’ incomes and killed a peoples’ dream, Katrina Manson (https://www.businesslive.co.za) records the drama thus; “Of all the types of poaching taking place in East Africa, that of sugarcane may be the least known. While wildlife conservationists rally public support for elephants and rhinos, the prospects for Kenya’s sugar sector remain bleak.
"Small-scale farmers in Western Kenya regularly sell their crops to impromptu roadside buyers come harvest time rather than honour contracts with millers who provide inputs in exchange for the crops they help finance. The practice sends up prices and goes by the name of cane poaching.”
That’s how Mumias Sugar Company met its nadir. Cane poaching is a symptom of the rot that had infiltrated the sugar sector with government knowledge.
Poaching was just an extension of sabotaging state-owned factories. The regulator, the Kenya Sugar Board, was complicit. Illegally, it licensed private mills next to government factories in contempt of the mandatory 40km radius.
As of December 2014, Mumias Sugar company was the lead miller at 20 per cent market share, followed at a distance by West Kenya Limited at 13 per cent, Nzoia 11 per cent, Sonny Sugar 10 per cent, Transmara 10 per cent, Butali Sugar 10 per cent, Sukari Industries 7%, Kibos seven per cent, Muhoroni and Chemilil both at six per cent. In 2015, national sugar production totalled 632,000 metric tonnes. Mumias and Nzoia pumped in 184,428 metric tonnes.
Six years later, a downward spiral reared in production and market share drop. By 2020, Kenya produced only 193,532metric tonnes. The market share had been overturned. All the privates had leapfrogged state entities.
West Kenya had taken the lead with a market share of 30 per cent, while Mumias wasn’t listed.
Butali followed with 16 per cent, Kibos Sugar 14 per cent, Sukari Industries 14 per cent and Transmara Sugar 13 per cent. State millers Nzoia, Muhoroni and Chemilil all recorded a dismal less two per cent.
What had happened?
The Board ensured private millers encircled struggling government factories to poach cane.
Mumias and Nzoia were boxed in by three privates —West Kenya and Butali — allegedly enjoying the patronage of the President, and Busia Sugar Industries under alleged patronage of DP Ruto.
By 2014, the state millers were in a free-fall: Five collapsed but eight private sugar millers thrived. The “poaching” culture had taken its toll. Mumias is out of the market and Nzoia is struggling.
In his maiden tour of the western region after elections in 2013, President Uhuru Kenyatta asked cane farmers to grow other crops such the wild guava.
Though he was harangued over such an “impossibility” instead of reviving the factories, Uhuru, in retrospect, was right.
A change from growing cane should’ve been. Today, the forgotten Sukari orphans of Mumias only hear of whispers of revival, recently replaced with privatisation that is never coming.
Accused of collusion to hawk the factories for a song to same interests that “poached” Mumias factory to closure, Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya is struggling to stick blame to everyone for the failed implementation of the Sugar Task Force report.
For as chairman, he’s accused of seeking to facilitate the acquisition of thousands of acres of the fallow nucleus land that is also claimed by the Wanga community.
By their reluctance to implement the task force report, the President and the DP are fuelling belief they aren’t honest due to their supposed patronage of “poacher” millers who, paradoxically, are assumed bidders for Mumias and Nzoia spoils.
Memories of Webuye Paper Mills sold for a song never to revive hover above talk of dynasties and hustlers.
Hustler talk is a reminisce of too much pain; sugarcane orphans reject the glorification of their sorry state.
Retribution will follow if only to assuage the Sukari orphans’ long nightmare of dreams deferred.
The symptoms of political payback could resurrect in the Matungu by-election and manifest in 2022 elections. Still, political revenge is the only constant n this forgotten lands that once hosted cane greenery.
Kabatesi is a political commentator