...
written by manta ray , November 14, 2007

Fantastic reasoning, Mboyaist! I think i am one too.

Flawed partisan thinking
written by MimiMzalendo , November 14, 2007

Centralization or De-centralization is the crux of the whole debate.

Clearly with all sides now in kow-tow, the decentralization side has been accepted by all parties. The only difference is the manner and level.

So please spare us historical allegories of the 1960's of what is and what is not decentralization.

Need I remind you ... UK in the 1960's was centralised. Today, its decentralized. Ditto - France, Swiss and some parts of Germany (East).

Maybe the critical question is: How come of the G-9 countries ... almost 90% are de-centralised. Also how come 80% of the Asean Tigers are de-centralised?

Instead of fear-mongering or -intellectual-scaring or historical-blanacing, just tell us whic shade of decentralization you want.

Remember .. the word is DEVOLUTION coz its previous term MAJIMBO has been burdened.

Finally, the 500 delegates at BOMAS and all the continental and local experts who enshrined devolution in both the BOMAS, KILIFI and WAKO drafts could not have been all so wrong.

MM

Not quite, MM
written by cirdan , November 15, 2007

MM,
The dominant mode of politics in Kenya is ethnic competition for public resources. If majimbo were introduced, this patrimonialism would be replicated and at lower levels and so reinforced. That was the argument.

You haven

State the facts!
written by @mm , November 15, 2007

The question is not "if majimbo is introduced" it is when majimbo is introduced:it depends on what you call it-majimbo,ugatuzi, usambazaji wa rasili mali(ain't sure about that), devolution.Surely we all know too well that all parties have stated in their manifestos that they want some sort of devolution(of power or resources), but they are not stating clearly what they have in mind. But as i've always said, Majimbo should not even be an election issue, because we all know too well that there will have to be some sort of referendum before the idea sails through. And as as i said be it ugatuzi, majimbo, usambazaji, devolution.....

A bit more on MM\'s comment
written by cirdan , November 15, 2007

MM,
The dominant mode of politics in Kenya is ethnic competition for public resources. If majimbo were introduced, this patrimonialism would be replicated and at lower levels and so reinforced. That was my argument.

You haven

\"Majimbo; Divide n Rule\"
written by vik , November 18, 2007

So far, this is the best logical method to curb the wide spread disease of corruption and mis-management of Kenyan Fund.
For foreign investors to invest their money in Kenya, for the better of the common mwananchi, the Goverment has to set an economical home playing field. which should be fair for all and attractive to many.
But all this is impossible because the gov't knows and cares less of whats going on as far as how finace and economy works.
We need Majimbo which will promote transperacy to the Governments activities. and offers less power to the central gov't, but more power to Kenyan Individuals through Federal States.

...
written by aeichener , November 18, 2007

I guess I commented prematurely...
:-(

A.

Ahsante Alex
written by cirdan , November 28, 2007

Alex,

Thanks for your very kind comments. I would argue that some civil-service functions have been taken over by NGOs and quasi-governmental bodies - and that since the quite early days of the Republic - but that is an argument for another day.

The roots of our woes...
written by aeichener , November 28, 2007

That was - in all its concise, poignant brevity - one of the best pieces I have read on Kenyan public law and administration in a long time. Knowledgeable, yet so clear and crisp that every average newspaper reader can understand it.

1. The juxtaposition of ethnic (group) interest and statehood is one that makes up the red thread through the history of British East Africa, the Kenya colony, and independent Kenya. Indeed, the settlers (be they independence-loving truculent Boers, or Brits) always resented the State and the Colonial Office which they felt curtailed their rights and was often perceived as too native-friendly. The settler-dominated legislative assembly was in near permanent opposition to the Governor, and in the Interwar times, even plans for a putsch in Rhodesian style were openly discussed among the kaburus.

2. What made up the outstanding exemplariness of later colonial Kenya (from the late 1920s onward) was that it had the very best administrators that the entire Empire could muster; civil servants whose zeal, altruism and spirit has until now - and it is very sad to state this so soberly - been unequalled in Kenyan history.

3. Furthermore, British Kenya had what independent Kenya soon lost: a *class* of civil servants in the European sense of the words. The role which Indians in general, Goans, Sikhs and Parsis particularly have played in Kenya can simply not be overestimated. This class exists not more, as a class. Many of them have moved away from East Africa altogether. A misunderstood Africanization; of the public service (as if being African had anything to do with skin colour!) did replace not only the whites (which was a necessary and inevitable process), but also the intermediary class.

4. The public service spirit to which I alluded in the prior paragraph was replaced with feudal allegiance to the leader (i.e. president). This is in greater detail explored and explained in the online book of

Leonard, David K.:African Successes: Four Public Managers of Kenyan Rural Development.Berkeley: University of California Press,1991

5. "It is a misrepresentation to say that the British conceptions of democratic rule, a bureaucracy oriented to service and development, and a civil service bound by strict conflict-of-interest ethics failed to take root on African soil. The truth is that the attempts to plant these ideas and the institutions to support them came very late in the colonial era and were quickly choked out by the already vigorous authoritarian conceptions that the British themselves had planted and nurtured earlier."
[page 285]

"the Provincial Administration therefore had to be Africanized very rapidly. This cadre had been the elite of the colonial civil service and had been drawn from a small, well-socialized group of Englishmen. The rapidity of transfer broke the chain of socialization. Many of the new African recruits, like Nyachae, had worked for the colonial government and had absorbed the priority it gave to order. But they did not assume the values of impartiality and respect for democracy that were latent among the British provincial administrators and saw their tasks more simply as the president's instruments of political control. Most of those in the cadre today have been successfully socialized into a role that permits the kind of political manipulation on behalf of the government of the day that characterized nineteenth-century French prefects."
[page 290]

Very concise, isn't it?