Stefaans Brmmer: A SECOND LOOK
Nicholas Biwott is Kenya’s political bogeyman. The minister of state in the office of President Daniel Arap Moi has a reputation that embraces ruthless murder, kleptomaniacal patronage and cynical manipulation.
Any edition of one of Kenya’s more adventurous journals is as likely as not to make reference to what they claim is Biwott’s central role in a system based on corruption, low-level violence and thinly veiled repression. Not having examined the evidence myself, I have only the word of my Kenyan colleagues to go by. For all I know Biwott is a man of peace, dedicated to democratic values and the upliftment of his people. The fact is, I don’t know.
The voices of respectability and restraint argue: give the man the benefit of the doubt. Assume he is innocent until proven guilty.
But then the inconvenient voice of reality pipes up. It speaks for the hundreds killed and tens of thousands displaced in “ethnic” massacres conveniently timed to punish opposition voters in Kenya’s last two general elections. It speaks for the millions of poor people who ask how the government has not a penny for them, while in the Goldenberg International scam it paid a crony’s firm 5,8-billion shillings in trade incentives for exporting gold from a country that produces no such thing.
That voice states a simple truth: where there are bodies there is a killer. Somebody is responsible and it is someone with power. Why go soft on Africa’s politicians, why buy into their self- aggrandising pomposity, when by design, neglect or incompetence many of them have perpetrated, instead of healed, the pain that colonial rule left behind?
I can think of another reason to give the benefit of the doubt to those in the media who besmirch Biwott’s name: the government of Kenya and Biwott could have contested the allegations. They could have argued and reasoned. They could have launched genuine inquiries. They could have prosecuted those really responsible for the violence and willingly acted against the corrupt “ugale- eaters” whose pap comes free from the state.
This done, surely claims that the godfather of State House runs a protection racket would be settled once and for all?
But Biwott and the government hardly deign to respond, and the press keeps printing and nothing changes.
Kenya’s press has of late joined the more free on the continent, but it is also among the most powerless. No more the blatant autocrat of the past, Moi has learned the refined skill of ruling ostrich-style: ignore a problem and it can do you no harm; don’t interact with the critical press and soon it ceases to be a factor in the political equation.
That is what I fear is happening in South Africa. I do not share the pessimism of those who believe the censors are waiting in the wings; that somehow under Thabo Mbeki they will be allowed to wield their long scissors again.
Neither am I worried by the peanut-gallery grandstanding that has been used with increasing frequency against voices, such as the Mail & Guardian’s, that the establishment would rather not hear.
A number of us (including a black colleague) have had the “racist” epithet thrown at us. We can take a punch, even below the belt. Robust debate is better than none.
But Moi’s ostrich farm is moving to South Africa: in recent weeks the M&G ran three stories detailing Gauteng Premier Mathole Motshekga’s relationship with one Abel Rudman, a businessman whose current business practices are alleged to be as unsavoury as his apartheid past.
A substantial body of evidence – and the M&G has the documents – shows the relationship went well beyond an ordinary lawyer-client relationship, which is what the premier claims it was. Take that small matter of a R50 000 donation …
The African National Congress and the government response to an extraordinary story that, at the very least, casts serious aspersions on a premier’s ability to judge character? Not a word.
One official claims a diktat came from the highest office in the ANC: “Don’t answer them; you’ll only be doing their work for them.”
In April when the M&G disclosed that the ANC-appointed Negota commission of inquiry into Motshekga was looking at allegations that he spied in the apartheid past, and that Mbeki had already been handed an intelligence report alleging the same, the ANC response was minimal: the proverbial don’t confirm, don’t deny.
In the end, George Negota made no firm finding on that claim: “The limited evidence placed before this commission … does not substantiate the allegation.”
Indeed, the evidence was limited: Negota did not evaluate the intelligence report which had been handed to Mbeki, neither did he hear the evidence of a businessman to whom Motshekga had allegedly confessed. Without conclusion, the book was closed on an allegation that has cost lesser people their lives.
Not that the ANC intended a cover-up when Negota was appointed in February. Perhaps the temptation to go ostrich just became too much when one possible outcome of a vigorous pursuit of truth became apparent: having to replace a popular premier in a marginal province when elections are only a year away. Political expediency ruled and whatever more the M&G could say was studiously ignored.
The response to another series of breaks by the M&G was similar. Last November we exposed the carpet-bagging past of Liberian Emanuel Shaw II, contracted without tender by state oil chief Don Mkhwanazi to restructure South Africa’s state oil interests. Minister of Minerals and Energy Penuell Maduna swiftly appointed acting director general Dick Bakker to probe the appointment.
But in February when Bakker recommended Shaw’s contract be cancelled, Maduna’s resolve was gone. He trashed his own inquiry and eventually handed the whole matter to Mbeki.
The M&G has revealed more, including details of Shaw and Mkhwanazi’s shared bank account, a conflict of interest if ever there was one. But the silence is official and Shaw still has his R3-million contract – at worst giving him a chance to ruin the local oil industry, at best allowing him to freeload outrageously at taxpayers’ expense.
It can be lonely out there, whistling among ostriches who won’t hear. We only hazard a warning that the ostrich is not a bird noted for its foresight and wisdom.
The obvious limitation to the head-in-the- sand approach is that you don’t know when hurricanes, runaway trains or enraged voters are headed your way.