David Gough in Mutitu, Kenya
Mwangi Githendu might not know much about politics but drumming his fist on the table to emphasise his point, he insists: “I know when I’m being cheated.”
It’s hard to imagine this kindly old man with his wispy grey beard and permanent smile as a leader of a violent peasants’ revolt, but that is what he has become.
Widespread corruption and mismanagement have driven Kenya’s coffee industry toward collapse and thousands of coffee farmers like Githendu over the edge.
“I decided one day that enough was enough. It was time to fight back,” says Githendu who, armed with a bow and some arrows marched with hundreds of other farmers on the Mutitu coffee factory, which processes his coffee beans, and forcibly evicted the union officials who he says have been cheating farmers for years.
Anger among coffee farmers has become so widespread that the actions of Githendu and his colleagues have been repeated throughout Kenya’s coffee-growing heartland in recent months.
The farmers’ quarrel is chiefly with corrupt union officials who have developed a complex web of bureaucracy, which channels proceeds from the sale of coffee through union bank accounts, where the money is held indefinitely and accrues interest.
By employing a credit system to supply the farmers with essential fertilisers and pesticides, the unions have further tied the farmer to a system of dependency and debt.
“They pay us whatever is left after they have paid themselves and their friends,” says Muri Kahunyo, Githendu’s neighbour.
In 1999 Kahunyo produced over 1E000kg of coffee. He should have received at least $1E000 but ended up with less than $200.
Coffee farming is no longer the ticket out of poverty that it promised to be during the boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
“We used to call coffee the Black Gold,” says Kahunyo, “Now it seems like a poison.”
Farmers made persistent efforts to open dialogue with the union but their approaches were consistently rebuffed.
“That’s why we took action. Nothing else would have saved us or our families,” said Githendu.
Kenya’s Central Province, where almost all the coffee is grown, is a bastion of the political opposition but they show little sign of getting involved in the coffee wars. “The politicians have done nothing to help us,” says one farmer, “because they are being paid a share by the unions.”
In the mid-1980s Kenya produced 130E000 tonnes of coffee. By the end of the 1990s that figure had fallen to a little over 50E000 tonnes.
John Irungu, the public relations officer for the Coffee Board of Kenya (CBK), which oversees the sale of Kenyan coffee, said that after all deductions the farmer should receive 80% of the sale price – between $1 and $3 a kilogram.
Recognising the scale of mismanagement, the government has appointed new directors to the CBK to reform the industry.
But they will have their work cut out. Hezron Nyangito of the Kenya Public Policy Research Institute says: “It is within the societies that the problems lie and if they are to be overcome then the unions must be brought to heel.”