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<I> <h> Danger posed by drug traffickers </h>
Whether it be the humiliating experience of jailed former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega or the extensive search for escaped Colombian drug warlord Pablo Escobar, the message is that the war on drug-trafficking has become relentless.
South America - despite the Bush Administration's politicising the whole exercise - may appear to be the centre of the action, but the war is being conducted with similar ruthlessness in theatres right across the globe.
But not even draconian measures taken by individual governments - including the death sentence on conviction in some countries - seems to have slowed down the illicit and highly-lucrative trade in drugs.
Hardly a day passes without news of successful raids by customs or anti-drugs police forces in major world cities. Huge amounts of drugs and large numbers of traffickers are usually netted in these raids.
This reality is now right in our own backyards. In recent years, scores of foreigners, mostly from West African (Nigeria is notorious) countries and from India and Pakistan, have been arrested by the local anti-narcotics unit and customs personnel at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Usually, the traffickers are in transit, through Nairobi to destinations in Europe and America.
In an update that Pakistan issued early this week to show the progress of its campaign to crack down on drug-trafficking, it said that it had smashed an African drug connection and arrested 49 Nigerians and Tanzanians over a seven-month period. The report said that the 49 were active in the supply of drugs from Islamabad to cities in Western countries.
An official of the Pakistan Narcotics Control Board said that most of those arrested were poor young men aged between 25 and 35, acting for African drug barons.
The nationalities of those arrested notwithstanding, the figure is absolutely alarming. It is also a clear warning to African governments that, if not effectively countered, drug-trafficking could grow into a menace that will bedevil this continent as more and more of its citizens find it easier to obtain travel documents to venture overseas.
In one of its major actions to help stamp out drug-trafficking in this country, the Attorney-General's office last month drew up a Bill that, among other drastic measures proposes life imprisonment for drug offenders. The Bill, which Attorney-General Amos Wako said would be published soon, will provide for a Sh1 million fine for drug offences or a fine equivalent to three times the market value of the narcotics held.
That is how serious the A-G views this menace that daily grows as it becomes easier to obtain. We are no longer dealing with "trivial" cases of some old man upcountry arrested with a few grammes of <ea/>bhang and who, in pleading for leniency in court, claims that without a puff of the stuff he cannot work on his <ea/>shamba. The drug problem is getting more and more to be a sure road to ruin for the impressionable youth.
Giving a breakdown of the cases, Mr Wako said police seized about 19,000 kilogrammes of cannabis <foreign/>sativa between 1990 and last month, in 4,104 cases involving 115 men and 25 women. Over 2.5 million Mandrax tablets and various quantities of cocaine were seized over the same period.
Besides educating the youth against drug abuse, Africa must pool its resources in a trans-boundary crack down on these death merchants. Hopefully, the hunger, poverty and unemployment which forces the youth to become peddlers and couriers for rich drug masters will also be tackled. Africa should not wait to grapple with the Escobars of tomorrow. </I>
<I> <h> Stop this terror once and for all </h>
Early last month, four policemen were shot dead in Garissa. They were killed by armed people the likes of whom Kenyans have come to refer to with dread as bandits.
Hardly a week later, five more policemen were gunned down when a gang of about 50 heavily-armed bandits attacked a police station in Isiolo District.
On Tuesday, bandits attacked households in the same Isiolo District and killed 13 people. Three other people who were injured died yesterday.
The security situation in several parts of Kenya appears to be deteriorating. We offer no apology for revisiting this subject yet again.
Bandit attacks are widespread. They have occurred in different parts of Tana River, Mandera, Malindi, Meru, Lamu, Kitui, Tharaka-Nithi and Turkana districts, the Mombasa tourist circuit and around Mount Elgon.
When bandits attack a police station and kill, loot and maim, this means, however temporarily, that the ordinary area people cannot look to the police to protect them. Indeed, what it means is that both the police and the civilians need to be protected!
The issue is that much serious, but the matter is compounded by the fact that we are not talking about a district or two; we are talking about the prevalence of bandit attacks in 11 districts. We are talking about people who are armed with automatic weapons and who are killing innocent Kenyans every week.
Who is behind this upsurge in banditry? Two members of Parliament from Isiolo District claimed recently that Government officials were behind this terror. They claimed that the officials were supplying the bandits with sophisticated weapons.
Mr Mwai Kibaki, the chairman, of the opposition Democratic Party of Kenya, is perhaps the most outspoken figure about this issue. Mr Kibaki has said that either the Government has failed to eradicate banditry or it is connected directly with it.
It is easy to argue that Mr Kibaki is making oppositionist political capital out of the issue, but the same cannot be said for Mr G.G. Mokku and Mr Dida Jaldesa. Indeed, Mr Jaldesa and Mr Mokku were categorical in their statement that there was a total breakdown of law and order in Isiolo District.
While it is hard to see any plausible reason why any government would want to sponsor any kind of suffering against its people, it is not hard to see that the security of millions of Kenyans who live in these areas infested with bandits is not guaranteed.
It is difficult to understand just how these gangsters have acquired such sophisticated weapons that they actually attack and overran a police station. It has been argued that the guns have been brought into the country from Somalia by those fleeing the war in that country and then sold to Kenyans.
Somebody must explain to Kenyans just how porous the Kenya border is that refugees (real and supposed) can actually move in with their guns and sell them to Kenyans. Why cannot the Kenyan authorities arrest and disarm these people?
No Kenyan should live in fear for a prime objective of the Government - in fact, any government, anywhere - is that of protecting its citizens and their property. Marauding bandits who plunder and pillage are spreading fear and terror in the minds of a myriad innocent Kenyans.
The Government must stop this bandit menace once and for all. 
</I>
<I> <h> Turkana needs food urgently </h>
Is it true that this is actually happening in Kenya? Then it is truly a national shame, a crying shame.
The Government must do everything in its power to send food to Turkana District. The information available shows that there is a severe famine in the area.
Yesterday's newspaper reports made frightening reading. Twenty teenagers trekked for a whole week from Turkana District to Eldoret town in Uasin Gishu District in search of food.
On their arrival at the Eldoret Municipal Market, the emaciated young people - most of them teenagers dressed in rags - were mobbed by prospective house-help employers and good samaritans who gave them food and clothing.
Other accounts, which have since been denied by the district administration, had it that parents in Turkana, District were, in fact, giving away their children to whoever was willing to give them money for food and retain the children as servants or maids.
What does this mean? The children are not trekking into Eldoret town with their equally hungry, weary and emaciated parents. Strictly speaking, these poor and hungry people are engaged in a barter trade involving human beings as its commodities!
For most parents, the children have to be fed first and a parent will go hungry but make sure that the little food available is given to the children. Famine has reduced the poor of Turkana to bartering their children for food!
In a drought situation, the hardest-hit areas are arid and semi-arid and Turkana District falls in this category. Obviously, these are the regions the Government should take food to first. 
Not long ago, we asked in these columns that the Government tell Kenyans what elaborate and necessary mechanisms it had put in place to ensure that food would be distributed in such a manner that it would reach all Kenyans.
There is no gainsaying the importance of such mechanisms and our insistence that they be put in place. We recall that the Government assured Kenyans that food would reach all and sundry. Well, it has not.
Perhaps this has happened because we have been so preoccupied with other issues - the Somali refugee situation in northern Kenya, party politics, etc - that we forgot about the looming food crisis in Turkana District, but this does not even begin to be an excuse.
Is it the case that there is no food in Kenya? Hardly. On Wednesday, the Minister for Supplies and Marketing, Mr Musalia Mudavadi, once again assured Kenyans that there was food enough for all.
There are many questions arising from this national disgrace and they will flow fast and furious until we learn how to take care of our own.
There is relief food in Machakos District even if a Kanu official there has already declared that it will be given only to those who are members or supporters of the ruling party.
The Turkana tragedy is a gigantic scandal. The Turkana are Kenyans and they are human beings. Obviously their children cannot go to school nor the adults engage in productive work when they are hungry. They must be given food first.
It is an old African adage that when a member of a family prospers, the entire family must share in that prosperity. Kenyans must share in this shame and must also share in alleviating the plight of the Turkana.
This must be done and the Government must lead the way in getting food to the district without delay. A stitch in time saves nine. 
</I>
<I> <h> Another winning chance for Gor </h>
Gor Mahia, Kenya's representatives in the continental club championships - the quarter-finals of the Africa Cup of Clubs - go on parade tomorrow against Sudan's El-Hilal in Khartoum. Their fans, as indeed every Kenyan, are expected to be rooting for them.
After their impressive performance two weeks ago, when they whipped the Sudanese 2-0 in Nairobi, they should not find it too difficult to dismiss their hosts.
However, the fact that Gor are in Sudan and ready for battle should not overshadow the tribulations they went through to raise money for the trip. And once again, the role of the Ministry of Culture and Social Services, the Kenya National Sports Council and the Department of Sports in the promotion of sport is questionable.
These are the Government organs charged with sport but they have such serious handicaps that they end up frustrating rather than promoting sport. It is a credit to Gor and the many well-wishers who boosted their kitty that they have made it to Sudan.
About five years ago, Gor won the Africa Cup-Winner's Cup (the Mandela Cup). They were the first club from the East and Central Africa region to attain that level of success. It was sweet victory and the entire nation associated with it. But Kenyans, particularly sports officials, need to associate themselves with the team's development and not merely wait to sing its praises on the victory podium.
That aside, our concern now is that Gor will not be overwhelmed by the intrigue and other problems attendant upon their preparation for the match.

</I>
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<I> <h> Eritrea will be good for peace </h>
No one really doubted that last weekend's referendum on the future of the northern territory in what is commonly known as Ethiopia would have been an emphatic endorsement of the independence of Eritrea.
The overwhelming vote was the triumphant culmination of more than 30 years of a relentless and savage war against what the Eritreans rightly saw as illegal occupation and annexation first from the Italian colonialists and later the imperial Haile Selassie.
The referendum itself was the last exciting stage in a tortuous process that the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) set in motion when they sent former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam fleeing from Addis Ababa in May 1991. The man who butchered thousands of Ethiopians and vowed never to allow Eritreans to secede is licking his wounds from the comfort of Harare and watching the country he decimated try to gather itself and stand on its feet.
So is everyone else. Africa lauds the new state and hopes that the referendum will set the stage for peaceful elections and the installation of a civilian government as soon as is practically possible. It is imperative that this is so because the challenges that the new state faces are infinitely more demanding than the war, costly as the latter one is. 
Eritrea joins other African countries at an enormous disadvantage. Its lengthy preoccupation with war forced many of its able, skilled people to flee the country. More than 700,000 are living outside the country as exiles. Where it was not totally devastated, the infrastructure has grown seedy and needs total refurbishment.
The question of the education of the citizens on practical skills and theoretical concepts has to be addressed as a matter of great concern. The fact that there are thousands of armed youth still in the forest makes the task of civic education even more demanding. 
There are other immediate concerns like the arrest of the degradation of the environment. How to encourage the hundreds of thousands of refugees to return and participate in the reconstruction process, and how to resettle after they return is another task that the voting government in Eritrea has to address. 
On the regional front, the most nettlesome issue will be the relationship it seeks to forge with Ethiopia which, as a result of the referendum, will effectively become landlocked. One of the reasons why Addis Ababa has for long held out that Eritrea must remain its province was because of the two main ports - Massawa and Assab - which are in the northern province on the Red Sea. The new state must convince Addis that it will have unhindered use of the ports. 
The young state also joins the African community at a time when the search for local initiatives for regional cooperation are at fever pitch, although progress on this score remains elusive. It is, in fact, paradoxical that the greater Ethiopia is splitting just when the rest of the continent is encouraging creation of regional blocs to form a basis for an African Economic Community.
To this end, the young leaders of Eritrea, and those in Addis Ababa, may wish to seriously consider the issue of a confederation. Mr Isaya Aferweki, the man set to be the first Head of State of Eritrea, hinted as much a few days before the referendum. He revealed that Asmara and Addis were "working on a programme of integration, joint ventures, fiscal unions, etc", and hinted that under the circumstances, a confederation was possible.
These are statements which inspire optimism in a situation where, often, there is reason for none. If they are used as the basis to develop the vision of the future, the horn of Africa may, ironically, turn out to be the platform on which a truly co-operative region is born. And that is what Africa needs rather badly at the moment. 
</I>
<I> <h> The passing of Oliver Tambo </h>
Oliver Tambo, he who breathed life into the Africa National Congress (ANC) in those dark clays when Pretoria arrested its top brass, drove it underground and into exile, ceased to breath on Saturday.
It was Tambo who led the ANC while in exile in London and Lusaka and other European and African capitals at a time when Pretoria was determined to wipe the movement - terrorist it called it - from the face of the earth.
Tambo had crossed into Botswana, those days called Bechuanaland, in 1960 about a week after the infamous Sharpeville massacre just in time to beat the ban on the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress and avoid imprisonment. 
He never looked back on the aims of the ANC while he always looked across the horizon from his home in exile at his country and knew that one day he would return.
Those were the days when Pretoria, under Vorster and Botha, declared that the ANC was a communist movement and the frontline states who gave succour and sanctuary to its followers were also enemies of freedom and civilisation. Those were the days when the apartheid regimes in South Africa used to mount air raids into the frontline states, to destabilise them and at the same time to cripple the ANC. Tambo, frontline states and the ANC stood firm.
Azania shall be free! That was their slogan and it is credit to Tambo that he was steadfast in his pursuit of freedom for South Africa, that he ensured that the ANC lived and kept alive the struggle against apartheid.
Men of lesser commitment and character would have wavered. But Tambo knew that on Roben Island were the other greats of the freedom struggle such as Walter Sisulu and, of course, Nelson Mandela and a host of others around the world.
It was Tambo and Mandela who in 1952 formed the first African law firm in South Africa having met each other at Fort Hare earlier in 1944 and also having founded the ANC Youth League together in 1944.
The men behind the bars did not give up hope, they still believed in the movement they had formed and looked forward to an apartheid-free South Africa. Tambo could not let them down nor could he let down the millions of blacks inside South Africa.
For 30-odd years, then, Tambo nurtured and built the ANC and its military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (the Spear of the Nation) and set the armed struggle into motion. It is, indeed, ironic that he should die so soon after charismatic Chris Hani, who was the commander of this armed wing, was assassinated. Even though he had a military wing in the ANC, Tambo was a believer in the peace process and it came as no surprise when in 1989, he was the mastermind behind the ANC's Harare Declaration which opened the doors to negotiations with Pretoria.
He has died at a time when the peace process in South Africa is sputtering and also at a time when the young ANC militants are seething with rage at the murder of Hani, but at a time also when there is hope for an apartheid-free Azania.
He died however, in his motherland, not totally free as he had always wanted both for himself and for the entire South African population . He died at a time when he and his long detained or jailed comrades were free and that is quite an achievement for the ANC he led and entire movement in which he played a great role. 
Like all great men he knew that his health could not allow him to exert himself to the demands of leadership as he had done for 30 years and so he passed over the leadership to Mr Mandela.
Yes, Anzania shall be free and Tambo is one of the <-/>illustrous sons of Africa who have contributed immensely to this freedom and one who has shown explicitly that Kipling was right when he wrote that in a truly egalitarian society there is neither east nor west, border nor breed nor birth. 
</I>
<I> <h> Of terror and 'riot policemen' </h>
One positive aspect of the Catholic bishops' protest to President Moi and the reply by Prof Philip Mbithi is that the exchange has elevated the issue of ethnic assault from the arena of the slanging match to a more restrained level of civilised debate.
If only we could see a similar transformation on the ground!
Far from achieving the government's stated aim of "ensuring the security of every Kenyan to protect property and foster national unity," several events yesterday involving the security forces appeared to demonstrate that very deterioration of which this column expressed apprehension just 24 hours ago.
From round the country came reports of violence, disparate in character, murky in origin, beclouded of motive, but adding up to a level of viciousness which makes us fear for the future of our country.
* Ten men raided Bahati police station, unsuccessfully. Two were shot dead.
* Four men attacked the Assistant Chief's post at Thogoto and stabbed to death an <-/>Adminstration Policeman.
* As a result of this incident, GSU men poured into the area terrified innocent Kenyans and whipped and slapped at least three of them, who happened to be Nation newsmen.
* In West Pokot, a headmaster was shot in the chest with an arrow as hundreds of non-Pokot fled the area in fear of Pokot attack.
Faced with this (by no means comprehensive) catalogue of horrors, Kenyans can only wonder when, if ever, the authorities will begin to provide an environment permitting realisation of the President's stated objective: A united nation in which human life is sacrosanct and in which all Kenyans live in peace and harmony. 
One of the saddest aspects of yesterday's events was the sheer terror which the appearance of General Service Units inspired in law-abiding Kenyans at Dagoretti following the Thogoto attack. GSU members are supposed to be our protectors; it is clear that in the eyes of the average Kenyan, they are seen as persecutors.
That these armed bullies feel free to beat defenceless reporters because the newspaper that employs them has the temerity to criticise the police force's manifest shortcomings is a rebuke to their leaders and raises serious questions about their training and discipline. Such criminal acts also insult the professionalism which restrains other equally criticised but better ordered custodians of law and order around the world.
We acknowledge the efforts of some senior officers to hold back their lawless juniors but this sort of thing happens much too often and the level of fear this force inspires is much too great to convince us that the GSU is performing its required role with fairness and justice. Too often these days, the police act like an out-of-control bunch of bully boys, giving the name "riot police" a whole new meaning. It is time they were brought to heel. 
In the wider context, one wonders how much the selfjustificatory aura of public pronouncements has permeated this particular institution of state. While Prof Mbithi's reply to the bishops was civilised and restrained in tone, it was also defensive, evasive, somewhat mean-spirited and, inevitably, blamed everything on the Opposition.
The bishops made very specific charges but beyond pointing out that President Moi had toured the clash areas, the Government's response did little more than say the security forces were trying hard to contain the violence in "difficult terrain."
Otherwise we got those knee-jerk reactions: Some members of the Opposition and clergy were fanning the clashes, the Opposition had a penchant for violence and oathing, some Opposition figures had called for civil disobedience, and vowed to create a Somalia- type situation, churchmen favoured the Opposition anyway.
Why is the Government so obsessed with the Opposition? The Opposition does not run Kenya, the Kanu government does. The Opposition does not have the power to carry out those actions the bishops requested, the Government does. When the Government is asked to ensure a toning down of inflammatory statements or dissociation from the most outrageous of Ministers' remarks, Kenyans have the right to expect the Government to heed this request. 
</I>
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<I> <h> Moi's apt advice on a special day </h>
In his Moi Day speech yesterday, President Moi asked the most pertinent questions regarding this new era of multiparty <-/politcs>.
He said the challenge we have is whether we Kenyans will be able to put our nation above tribe; whether we can rise above tribalism so that we can choose our leaders on the basis of their commitment to our nation and the welfare of all Kenyans; and whether we can conduct our politics in a clean and honourable manner instead of practising the politics of hate, disruption, deception and misinformation.
President Moi is a politician of longstanding and he knows exactly what he is talking about. He has seen the Independence struggle, the conflicts that arose as Independence drew near and the rivalry that existed between Kanu and the now-defunct Kenya African Democratic Union (Kadu) and, later, between Kanu and the short- lived Kenya People's Union (KPU).
Indeed, the President knows very well the politicians he is dealing with in Kanu and those in the opposition and he knows exactly what their aspirations are. But, most important, he knows what could very easily reduce to pulp and squalor what Kenyans have painstakingly built over the last 29 years.
Top of the list is, of course, the hydra-headed, beady-eyed monster of tribalism. In the tension-filled rough and tumble of multi-party politics, it is very easy for a politician or rabble-rouser to try and enlist the support of certain ethnic communities in a scheme which seeks to antagonise other sections of society.
A well-meaning leader will not resort to tribal sentiment if he or she seeks to have a society which is multi-ethnic live in harmony. A well- meaning leader will be loathe to be seen as a tribal leader for what will happen is that other communities will feel marginalised. In such circumstances, society will never be cohesive. That is why President Moi asked Kenyans whether they will rise above tribe and tribalism and choose leaders on account of their commitment to the nation and welfare of the people of Kenya. The men and women who fought for the Independence of this country were men and women of integrity and character and they set out to create a united Kenya and the leaders Kenyans choose must be committed to this goal.
The President has hinted that the date of the General Election is drawing close and it is significant that he warned yesterday that that there should be no room in Kenya for the politics of hate and disruption. But come election time and some politicians will doubtless open their mouths and spew some incredibly inflammatory nonsense.
They will be doing that at the peril of Kenya because, in that case, electioneering could turn out to be very violent indeed. In that very short span of 21 days of vote-seeking, untold damage could be caused by people preaching the politics of hate, disruption and misinformation.
President Moi was right. Politics must be played in a clean manner and the accent must be on the fact that there is no room for tribal politics and the politics of tribalism.
The President also spoke about corruption. For years, the two public auditors have churned out what amount to audits of corruption in the minutest detail in Ministries, public-funded corporations and other institutions, but nothing ever happens to the culprits. It was therefore gratifying to hear President Moi say that these cases will now be investigated thoroughly and the culprits brought to book.
He also said that a mechanism will be established to ensure that such malpractices are detected in advance. Good. For a long time, it has appeared as if public funds are allocated to be misused.
But over and above all this, the President told Kenyans that the future of their country rests in their hands and they must be full participants in all economic and social sectors for the success of development programmes. 
<I/>
<I> <h> The new test for United Nations </h> 
The United Nations yesterday celebrated its 47th anniversary since its formation in 1947 as the premier global organisation charged with enhancing universal peace and stability as the world recovered from the horrors of the Second World War.
As the world celebrates almost half a century without a global conflagration, it is poignant to recall the prime objective of the United Nations, namely the maintenance of global peace and security. This was, and still is, a tall order that the United Nations has admirably discharged despite the ideological and economic cleavages of the Cold War era.
More importantly, in the nuclear age, the United Nations has vigorously pursued the disarmament campaign, trying hard to show the horror and evil of a nuclear conflict that would dwarf the Second World War in intensity and extent of destruction and human suffering.
For the South, the United Nations has provided the best forum in which to articulate the demands of the underdeveloped world. It has managed to draw attention to the evils of colonialism, racism and other global issues that threaten world peace and security. Indeed, the United Nations has provided an outlet <-/throught> which the weak have a forum to address the strong and seek mediation and arbitration in bilateral and multilateral issues.
But as the Cold War era ends, the United Nations has to adapt accordingly to meet the challenges of a uni-polar world with diverse power centres and flashpoints that constantly threaten world peace and security. The most glaring of the flashpoints are the former Yugoslavia and Somalia, both embroiled in a vicious civil war as ethnicity, clanism, nationalism and religious bigotry rear their ugly heads.
The United Nations' reaction to these threats to regional and, ultimately, global peace has been inadequate, hesitant and slow in arresting widespread human suffering and resolving conflicts where its neutrality, expertise and reach are crucial, if not vital. In Somalia, its performance and reaction has been unsatisfactory. With regard to the former Yugoslavia where a similar human tragedy is unfolding, the UN's performance has been terribly inadequate.
It is imperative that the United Nations places a higher premium on regional conflict resolution as the most serious threat to global peace and security. If the world has been spared from a Third World War, it has in the intervening years witnessed dozens of regional wars and conflicts with a human toll almost equal to the Second World War.
As the world celebrates nearly half a century with the supranational organisation, it must mourn nearly half century of regional wars that need not have been with the attendant loss of life and property and a continuous blight on universal peace and security.
Now in its mid-life crisis, the United Nations must take cognisance of the impending conflicts and seek pre-emptive measures and, where necessary, intervene in maintaining peace and stability in defence of human dignity. Now is the time for the United Nations to actively pursue global peace. Now is the time for members of the United Nations to forego their sovereignty in search of peace. Now is the time for the United Nations to shake off the perceived dominance of the Western powers in its policy formulation and execution for the benefit of the Security Council members.
Human tragedies of the magnitude of Somalia's, former Yugoslavia, Liberia, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Iraqi-Iran conflict and the Gulf War must not be allowed to threaten world peace. The United Nations must seek to enhance its peace and conflict resolution capacities because the world has never been so threatened and exposed to war than it is today. The Cold War era may be over, but the era of peace has yet to begin. It takes more than the absence of war for the world to benefit from the peace dividend.
</I>
<I> <h> End milestone massacres now! </h>
The fact has not been lost on observers of the South African scene that it took the massacre of Boipatong to scuttle the peace talks between anti-apartheid crusaders (led by the ANC) and the Pretoria Government and it has taken another massacre, the butchery in Bisho, to get the ANC to respond positively to overtures from President Willem de Klerk to resume talks.
All indications are that the Nelson Mandela-led African National Congress and President de Klerk's government are headed for high-level negotiations soon.
Though it is a pity that these negotiations are resuming only after Monday's Bisho massacre which saw 28 supporters of the ANC shot dead and another 200 wounded on the orders of Brigadier Oupa Gqozo, leader of the so-called nominally independent Ciskei homeland, the time is right and ripe for talks.
Condemning the ANC leadership as an irresponsible lot which stretched the democratic right of free expression to its limits and ignoring the murderous consequences just will not do. Suffice it to say that Ciskei is a legacy of the now-receding monstrosity that is apartheid.
Suffice it to say that the massacre of innocent supporters marching into the principal town of the homeland to press for the overthrow of a despotic leader, who seized power through force of arms, is yet another grim reminder of the violence that apartheid has repeatedly unleashed on the blacks.
The concept of nominal independence homelands style is remains a contentious issue. Ciskei and the other nominally independent homelands of Kwazulu, Bophthatswana and Qwagwa were created by Pretoria because of its segregationist policy of apartheid. However, the fact is they belong to the South African nation.
The troops of the Ciskeian Defence Force who opened fire on the estimated 60,000 ANC marchers were not up against an armed invasion from an enemy state, but a peaceful demonstration. They could have fired above the heads of the demonstrators, but they used live ammunition to kill.
We are not absolving the ANC of blame. Of course, the ANC leadership defied a judge's edict confining the demonstration to the Bisho stadium and decided to march into the town, oblivious of the fact that Brigadier Gqozo's uniformed goons would shoot to kill.
It is significant to observe that the South African Cabinet met on Friday to deliberate on the talks and resolved that the two sides should meet to talk about violence and the way it should be stopped if the democratisation process is not to be derailed altogether.
Put another way, violence, which has been part and parcel of the segregationist policy of apartheid, has also become part and parcel of the road to the total eradication of this racist ideology and the creation of a democratic society in which all races will co-exist, irrespective of colour. It is therefore fitting that all sides involved in the struggle for the democratisation of South Africa sit and address the issue of violence, be it black-on-black, white-on-black or the-government-on-citizens.
Violence will not hasten the creation of an apartheid-free society; violence only breeds more violence. Violence can, therefore, see South Africa engulfed in a conflagration fuelled by blood in which there can be no winners.
Indeed, it is the fear of a bloodbath that is now forcing Pretoria to <-/>to turn to the ANC and ask for talks. This is a pity, but a bloodbath must be avoided at all costs. In the meantime, mass action may be one way of forcing reactionaries in South Africa to see sense, but it should have certain parameters within which it should be carried out.
Enough of massacres, as either the blood- stained milestones on the road to a free and just South Africa or the desperate catalysts of the peace talks! 
</I>
<I> <h> Act now to avert an energy crisis </h>
Whatever happened to dialogue? For nearly four months, the Government and the Petroleum Dealers' Association have been locking horns over an issue supremely dear to all business persons everywhere - the profit margin.
The dealers say their operating margin has been progressively eroded over the past nearly-two decades, from 10 per cent to a paltry 3,3 per cent. As a result, they argue, their business and entire livelihood, including that of more than 15,000 employees, are at stake.
... 
</I>
W2E004K
<I> <h> Why IPK`s strike is doomed to fail </h>
The unregistered Islamic Party of Kenya (IPK) wants Kenyans to stay away from work because of various ills it believes the Government should be forced to redress through the strike action.
Perhaps a look at the reasons the IPK gives for its strike call is in order if we are to return a verdict on this serious issue. Serious because the withdrawal of labour by workers is the ultimate weapon the producers of the country's wealth have and which, in most cases, is invoked as the weapon of choice as a very last resort.
To begin with, the IPK statement that called for tomorrow's strike said the Government had failed to stop atrocities in areas of the country hit by the so-called tribal violence. Obviously, the IPK does not think much of the Government's declaration of the Molo, Londiani and Burnt Forest areas as security zones.
If that, in fact, is the case, then the IPK would do well to give the Government time and see just how the situation in Molo will improve or deteriorate before it can resort to the strike action. True, the Government did not act as fast and as decisively as it should have done earlier on, but it has put its foot down at last.
The IPK says the Government is ruining the economy, encouraging corruption and interfering with industrial freedoms and rights of workers by destabilising Cotu (the Central Organisation of Trade Unions) and labour unions. Did not Cotu play into the hands of the Government when it called for a national strike last May? One may not like the law, but as it stands now, it is very clear on strikes and the procedures that are to be followed before the workers lay down their tools.
But is the trade union leadership blameless? Are we suggesting that the leaders are all manipulable, that none of them can say no to manipulation? Former Cotu boss Joe Jolly Mugalla was a Kanu hawk since 1986 when he rose to that position and only made a 180-degree turn after last year's national elections in which he was a losing contestant.
Back to the law. The strike the IPK is calling is illegal. There are just too many employers, the Government included, (and it is the largest employer though not the best remunerator) who want to reduce their work force. Is the IPK confident, under these circumstances, that its strike call will not give such employers a blank cheque to sack employees?
Is the IPK confident that Kenya's workers, reeling under hard economic times and aware of the massive unemployment gripping the country, will turn a deaf ear to the adage <ea_>usiache mbachao kwa msala upitao<ea/>?
There is no gainsaying the support, demonstrated and silent, the IPK enjoys at the Coast, especially in Mombasa, but the party's support around the country is not substantial, especially because it is allied to the Islamic faith? Its strike call could hit Mombasa hardest, but will that be enough to force the Government to do what the IPK wants?
We understand that IPK leaders sent emissaries to the registered opposition parties to solicit their support, but their request was turned down presumably because the so-called mainstream opposition parties are enmeshed in their own internal problems. That is telling, isn't it?
Lastly, which could well be first, one might want to know from the IPK leaders whether they have reckoned with their adversaries next door, the United Muslims of Africa, whose objective appears to be to counter IPK activities any time and all the time.
This strike will flunk and that is as it should be, because the call for it is misguided and selfish. 
</I>
<I> <h> News on maize is a great relief </h>
The immediate and natural effect of the Government's decision to end the cereals board's maize-marketing monopoly will be the entry of the private sector in the handling of the grain, which is a staple for almost all Kenyans.
What this means is that the National Cereals and Produce Board will have to compete with private enterprises or entrepreneurs in the marketing and distribution of the crop. That should ensure that consumers will get the grain much more easily than has been the case previously.
Critics of the NCPB monopoly and restrictions imposed by the Government on the movement of maize have argued that these have had the effect of hampering free commodity flow between surplus and deficit areas.
The upshot of this has been that certain areas of the country have experienced shortfalls in supply of the grain while others have had an oversupply of it, a situation which has resulted in lower producer prices in these areas.
It has also been argued that the distribution of maize by the NCPB has been an added burden to the Treasury, and by extension the taxpayer, because of high subsidies and misuse of public funds by officials of a poorly managed State- run parastatal.
Now that the Government has ended the controls and the NCPB monopoly and allowed private individuals to import maize and market it, observers are of the view that these complaints will be a thing of the past.
But even more important is the fact that the latest report of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) forecasts that Kenya's grain deficit will be about one million tonnes and this at a time when the country is going through a third successive year of drought.
This makes it imperative that Kenya finds alternative ways of feeding its people rather than rely on food donations from overseas and this is why private importers have to come in and, hopefully, to increase investor confidence, they have been allowed to move the grain without restrictions.
It should also be borne in mind that the donor community, especially the United States and the European Community have been urging the Government to privatise the marketing of grain and this was one area that the Government was still to address even as the Paris Club meeting was drawing close.
Although the Government has been reluctant to cede its monopoly on the marketing of maize and although one can only transport 88 bags of locally-produced maize without a permit, the Government has again shown that it is committed to making economic reforms.
What is not clear as yet is how one will differentiate between local and imported maize. It is very easy for somebody, for example, import a certain amount of maize and then beef it up with local grain and sell all the stock as imported grain.
One of the reasons for doing this is that imported maize is bound to be more expensive than local maize for it is hard to see how importers will sell their maize at the same price as local maize. What will that mean for the consumer? It appears likely that consumer prices will go up to reflect the cost of importation and distribution.
What will be the effect of <-/importations><+_importation> on local production? There are many who argue that Kenya need not be importing sugar and indeed, partly blame the poor performance of the sugar industry on massive importation of the commodity.
President Moi said it; long-term food stability rests squarely with Kenyans themselves. We might add that we owe it to ourselves to think about the future and possible crop failure and inclement weather when there is plenty of food. We have faired badly in this regard; we have been wastrels. 
</I>
<I> <h> Cheer up, there's still some hope </h>
It's supposed to be the greatest time of your life, that optimistic three year span between leaving school and starting work, when clever young men and women exult in their freedom from family control, joyously explore advanced realms of intellectual and prepare for the responsibilities of productive citizenship and caring parenthood. These are the university years.
Sadly, not many of Kenya's students can approach this halcyon interregnum with so blithe a spirit. They're more concerned about whether they will be accepted for a college course in the first place, how they will survive if they are and whether they will get a job when they graduate.
Whereas in many countries students make the news for their ingenious contributions to charity (rag days/bungeyjumping) or their radical political involvement or for individual sporting achievements, here the headlines take on a darker hue.
In recent weeks there have been strikes or threats of strikes about non-payment of advances and allowances, the high costs of textbooks, the quality of teaching, the paucity/low standards/monotony of university food, overcrowded cafeterias and bursting lecture halls, lack of facilities and over- zealous security. From time to time, the students complain bitterly of police brutality.
Even on the verge of tomorrow's graduation at the University of Nairobi, a student ultimatum has been issued to the university authorities to provide gowns or face disruption.
There have also been complaints about students, not least their recent rampage in Nairobi, when innocent motorists were attacked and robbed because the college crowd missed their chance to deliver a list of grievances to President Moi.
This was an unsavoury incident, not only for the arrogant flouting of the law in a style more akin to <ea/>matatu touts, but more seriously for the students' assumption that all citizens were fair game for their anger - like football hooligans kicking passers-by because their team lost.
It would nevertheless be as unfair to characterise all students as greedy and mindless louts as it would be ungenerous to ignore the very real anxieties that beset these young people at a time when many of their foreign counterparts are enjoying a happy and carefree lifestyle.
The hard fact is that money for education is at a premium. The Government is facing horrendous budget-balancing problems and Structural Adjustment Programmes almost certainly will lead to further cutbacks, if not total stoppages, in allowances.
Finding fees has become a problem of unbearable proportions for the average parents who daily see their purchasing power remorselessly eroded by inflation. If the student gets money for his fees, his siblings or parents must go without something they need. Any sensitive young man and woman cannot be unaware of this and the knowledge can only add to their anger, guilt and apprehension.
It might be argued that as a result of ill- considered political decisions in the past, we simply have too many students at our universities, not all of them of an acceptable intellectual standard. Taken with the day-today problems of university life as set out in the students' complaints above, the chances are that many graduates simply do not meet the requirements of a discriminating employer in today's harsh economic conditions.
Indeed, even if he or she does measure up, that is no guarantee of a job at a time when employees are being laid off, no-hiring policies instituted and some companies closing down.
No Kenyan can be unaware of the Government's intention to fillet the bloated civil service. Though the bureaucracy will always need some of the finest minds our universities produce, these will form a tiny minority of the output and most students would do well to accept right now that their future will not include a white collar job in a comfy chair behind a big government desk.
Instead they should be thinking in entrepreneurial terms, of carving out their own future, a riskier path and one which requires courage, but which in the end will provide greater rewards.
History is full of examples of poor but stubborn and single-minded men who scraped together the money to support a good idea and brought it to triumphant fruition. We refuse to believe Kenya's universities do not have young men and women of similar character, who can study markets and needs, identify niches and produce goods and services to fill them.
What is important is that this new young breed must not be frightened of getting their hands dirty, whether in workshop or farm, factory or office. The correlation of success with a clean collar and polished shoes is a misleading class attitude from a bygone and irrelevant era.  
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<I> <h> The dangers of patenting genetics </h>
A lot has been said and written about protecting Africa's natural resources, especially its rich but rapidly dwindling plant and animal germplasm. However, despite the many utterances and international treaties, the continent continues to lose its genetic resources to commercial interests, including plant and animal breeders from the developed North.
Africa, like other developing nations in the tropical world - Asia and Latin America - is rich in genetic resources. But it is shocking that the continent does not seem to realise that the biotechnology revolution portends great danger for this germplasm which, ironically, may be the continent's only weapon against the new form of exploitation and plunder.
As it is, there are hardly any measures in place or deliberate policies, to ensure that Africa can conserve, develop and profitably utilise its vast genetic resources. The situation is not helped by the fact most African states have limited internal technical capacity to protect their genetic resources. The major world gene banks are in the developed and profit-hungry states in the North, although indigenous varieties of plant and animal germplasm are minimal there. The upshot of this is the greatest problem facing poor nations with rich genetic resources: The unorthodox commercialisation of the so-called improved genetic varieties through patenting and breeder's rights.
Developed nations have created a great advantage for themselves by directly and indirectly allowing the patenting of genes - including human - as part of intellectual property rights. The option for poor countries is to insist on practical recognition - read compensation - being given to countries that originate the improved genes.
Africa also desperately needs to acquire the capacity to conserve its genetic resources. One aspect of conservation which can be easily sustained is the maintenance of plants and animals in their original habitats or nature reserves.
It may also involve establishing facilities outside the original plant and animal habitats, including seed gene banks, botanical gardens and even special laboratories. Africa lags behind in terms of both the technology and policies needed for conservation and for sustainable and profitable utilisation of its genetic resources.
These are the issues being discussed at a seminar organised by Unep, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR) and the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation (CTA).
Experts have realised that the traditional African farmer still possesses crop varieties which should be conserved because they are unavailable in research laboratories and genebanks. In the process, the traditional farmers should be given all the rights to and benefits associated with being the source of such materials.
There is some fear that the Rome-based IBPGR, which has been under FAO and has collected over 200,000 germplasm samples from the tropical world, may become another "donor's club" when, before the end of the year, it becomes the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute financed by the West.
This is notwithstanding the promise of its director, Dr G. Hawtin, that it will help develop individual countries' ability to use and conserve the vast plant genetic resources each possesses.
We hope, as the director of KARI, Dr C. Ndiritu said, that the action-oriented resolutions expected from the seminar will be translated into a permanent supply of food for the Africa. 
</I>
<I> <h> Bank crisis: CBK the main culprit </h>
For more than a year the writing has been on the wall that all was not well in the banking sector.
But like the proverbial ostrich, the Central Bank, which is charged with licensing, regulating and supervising the sector, decided to bury its head in the sand or simply looked the other way when those in the know persistently reported that some banks were standing on financially shaky ground.
Whatever name the institutions went by, they were clearly flouting banking regulations and getting away wit it. Sadly, the Central Bank did not want to admit it and now questions must be asked as to why it waited so long before millions of hungry and malnourished people in doing what it should have done in the first place.
Why, for instance, did the Bank provide political patronage to these institutions, allowing them to flout all known banking regulations? Besides Trade Bank and the 11 small non-bank institutions that were closed on Monday, there are many finance houses and banks that are limping. The credibility of the sector is at its lowest.
Many are now wondering what magic wand indigenous Kenyans and other local entrepreneurs must possess to successfully operate a financial institution. The failure of local banks in 1986 and the repeat performance this year is a strong indictment of the managerial skills of local people. But it is even a stronger indictment of the Central Bank's abilities to supervise what would have been a highly competitive sector.
The crash of '93 is even more telling than the crash of '86 in that institutions such as the Trade Bank group actually enjoyed the most powerful incumbent political patronage while in the case of 1986 the financiers and bankers who crash-landed were clearly out of favour with the powers that-be. To have had political "protection" and yet collapse is evidence of the greatest wrong-doing.
What, besides closure of the institution, is the Central Bank planning to do about the remaining institutions in order to ensure that locals are not wiped out of the financial scene? The existence of the smaller banks was healthy for the sector. There was competition and services markedly improved.
The smaller institutions ensured that the bigger ones were perpetually kept on their toes, doing everything they could to ensure they attracted more customers and did not lose existing ones.
The established banks knew what was happening long before the big thud that came with the closure of Trade Bank last week. So did the Central Bank. But the difference between them and the Central Bank is that they did something to insulate themselves from the ensuing adverse effects of bad policy by trading with each other and having little to do with the shaky institutions.
The Central Bank did nothing to ensure the small institutions' future. Instead, it gave them political patronage as they flouted banking regulations by surviving on overdrafts at the Bank and abusing the pre-shipment facility, pushing the money supply tip and inflation to its present levels of more than 40 per cent.
The banks are tumbling and with them hundreds of jobs for Kenyans. Analysts fear that the large banks might continue with their cartel operations and exercise undue influence over the sector.
The Central Bank's belated attempts to correct the situation when it is almost beyond repair is another clear example of its failure, bad policy and weak management. The key question is: How will the Central Bank ensure that no more of these banks mushroom or are licensed in future? How will it restore the lost confidence in indigenous banking?
As is often said, once bitten, twice shy. Kenyan depositors have in fact been bitten twice. If they in future completely stay away from banks with local roots, they should not be blamed. Blame the Central Bank and, of course, the shameful failure of the managers who run locally established financial institutions. 
</I>
<I> <h> Back this spirit with careful plans </h>
We have it on the authority of the Rift Valley Provincial police chief Mr Francis Sang, that Molo, Londiani and Burnt Forest have been calm over the past week. He said so on Friday.
That is as it should be for, indeed, before 1991, that is the way it always was before the infamy of the so-called tribal clashes set in, disrupted normal life and the economic activities of the people.
On the same day Mr Sang spoke, the Nakuru District Commissioner, Mr William Kerario, asked people who were displaced by the clashes and who are camping in Molo and other areas to return to their homes.
Mr Kerario said the Government will serve them from their homes. Given the decisive action the Government has taken to end the clashes and given that there is calm, it is proper and in order that the displaced people return to their homes.
However, Mr Kerario did not go further than saying that the people should return and they will be served by the Government. Kenyans hope and expect that the Government has laid down machinery and modalities for the resettlement of clash victims.
Secondly, as peace returns to the areas that were ravaged by the clashes, it is important that every Kenyan observes the laws of the land and especially those which now govern these clash areas, now designated security zones.
Why do we say this? Precisely because when peace abounds it can easily be taken for granted, but when interfered with or disrupted, it is very difficult to restore.
Its restoration can be painstakingly slow, especially because suspicion and mistrust set in and more so when there have been instances of people losing their loved ones and property. The wounds take time and patience to heal.
Normalcy will not return to the clash areas as fast and as unexpectedly as the clashes broke out. Most of the displaced will have to begin from scratch and it will take back-breaking, iron determination and grit to get started and to sustain the momentum.
It should be recalled that there have been appeals in the past to displaced people to return home and when some have done, they have fled again, saying they were attacked despite official assurances that the clashes were no more.
Indeed, some victims have been ready and willing to return to their homes, pick up the pieces and rebuild their homes and lives, but they say they have not been accorded the security necessary for them to do this.
In other words, there has to be security for peace to be restored in those areas ravaged by this politically instigated gangsterism and violence. The provision of security is the forte of the Government as is the protection of all citizens of this country.
As long as these two are assured - and the Government has said it is committed to providing them and will provide them - victims of clashes say they can put the past behind them, rebuild their homes and lives and shame doubting Thomases.
That is wonderful spirit. However, apart from providing security and protection to these people, perhaps, the Government should consider assisting them to resettle. They need food and clothing as they put up new homes and as they plough and plant.
There are some among them who lost vital documents such as land title deeds as they fled or as their houses burnt. There are those who lost certificates and identification papers without which they cannot possibly convince institutions and individuals that they qualify for loans, for example.
What we are saying is that resettlement does not just entail going back to where one came from, so to speak. It is a long process. Therefore the Government must put in place a mechanism for resettling the displaced of Molo, Londiani, Burnt Forest, Trans Nzoia and all other areas in western Kenya which were hit by this. violence.
If the Government already has such a mechanism in place, it has not made it public, but it is important that such information be made available so that clash victims, critics of Government and all Kenyans know exactly what is being done for their displaced brethren.
Apart from the Government announcement declaring Molo, Londiani and Burnt Forest security zones, there has not been a formal announcement as to what exactly is the next step.
What plans does Government have for the resettlement of victims of clashes? 
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<I> <h> Maputo peace treaty major breakthrough </h>
The signing of a peace agreement between the Mozambique government and the Renamo rebels is a great breakthrough for a country devastated and torn apart by a civil war for the past 16 years.
Mediators in the internal conflict have spent anxious moments and sleepless nights to talk the two warring parties into signing an agreement which it is hoped will put Mozambique back on the road to development.
The main players in the search for peace have to be commended for tirelessly holding meeting after meeting with President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique and Alfonso Dhlakama, leader of the rebel Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo).
Chief among the peacemakers are Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi who has time and again been at the forefront of the negotiations, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Dr Quett Masire of Botswana and President De Klerk of South Africa.
Another key negotiator in the peace accord signed in Rome yesterday is Lonrho's chief executive, Mr Roland `Tiny' Rowland, who has also been involved in efforts to end war in Angola and Sudan. His latest mission to Sudan could lead to the first meeting between President Omar Bashir and Mr John Garang, the rebel leader.
With the signing of the peace accord, a ceasefire will take effect as soon as the treaty is ratified by the Mozambican parliament, which diplomats say is expected this week.
The Mozambique peace treaty means a lot to people who have never known calm since the country's independence from Portugal in 1975. The war has claimed more than a million lives and driven several million from their homes into neighbouring countries and abroad.
The country devastated by drought is one of the world's poorest economically. But with the signing of the accord this might change.
Unlike many other poor states, the Southern African country has plenty of resources that could feed the famine-stricken people and put the economy on a sound footing. The country has a lot of potential and peace can give this potential a chance to shape development.
With peace, foreign investors are likely to start projects which will, by and large benefit the Mozambicans. One area which could attract heavy investment is agriculture. The war and the drought have left huge tracts of land lying idle. This land could be irrigated with the help of foreign investment to produce food for the country which requires more than one million tonnes of foodstuffs to survive.
It might take years to be self-sufficient in food and supplying raw materials to industry and for export, but the country will produce more than it is doing now.
Agriculture is only one potential growth area. Cabora Bassa dam, which straddles the Zambezi in the northwest, is a sleeping giant, immobilised by Renamo saboteurs and regional conflict.
With peace, work should be able to go ahead on restoring the line leading to South Africa. Zimbabwe and Botswana have expressed an interest in buying Cabora Bassa power.
Relations with South Africa are improved these days and an agreement signed this year allows a South African company to exploit huge natural gas deposits in Inhambane province. The country has coal also and mineral deposits containing valuable tantalite and gold.
But economists say in the short term the most important peacetime asset is the port and rail system, which serve South Africa and landlocked Zimbabwe, Zambia, Swaziland and Malawi.
Beira port has a 130 million dollar multi- purpose terminal, financed by the European Community, the United States, Finland, the World Bank and the African Development Bank.
Financiers were ready to put in that kind of money in times of war. Mozambicans are waiting to see what will come in peacetime.
We hope and trust the warring parties will respect the agreement they have appendaged their signs to because peace is the most important legacy they can give the people of Mozambique. 
</I>
<I> <h> Turkana experience is a shame to Kenya </h>
SHOCKING news to the effect that hunger in Turkana District has forced parents to barter their children with food should set any Kenyan's heart bleeding with sympathy and shame.
While we have looked across the border into Somalia to monitor the havoc of hunger in our own country, famine has reached a dehumanising scale.
According to reports reaching us yesterday, Eldoret market has turned into what may accurately be described as a scene of neo-slavery.
The only difference is that slavery, as it used to be, involved kidnapping for forced labour. In this case hunger has forced parents to willingly offer their children to those who can feed them to stay alive and in return, the children would work for them.
For parents to reach a stage where they have to barter their children for food then that can only mean that they have been plunged into a crisis.
Offering their children away may seem to be a strange expression of parental love but for parents who have seen some of their children die of hunger, the options do not seem to exist. They have lost hope.
The development should be a serious challenge to Kenyans. Unfortunately, news from Eldoret indicate that Kenyans are not ticking to the challenge.
Instead, many at the Eldoret market seemed to have been cheerful about a rare opportunity for cheap labour. We are not pointing any accusing finger at those who participated in the barter deals, they probably had no other option too and had to do so to help save lives.
We can only assume that those who received the children will treat them well and that they will allow the children's parents to know where they live with an aim that one day they can be re-united with their parents.
One of the most significant of human rights is education. Circumstances have not allowed the children to go to school. It is our hope that the new foster parents, if we may call them so, will help in that direction as well.
For the Kenyan society and a whole, many questions will require answers. Why have we as a society allowed the people of Turkana to be plunged in such a crisis, such a state of syncope, where the hereafter is no more than a mockery, a myth or death?
Where as a society did we lose humanity? Can we be that much trapped in multi-party political bickering that we fail to see our brothers and sisters equally trapped in such a sad tangle?
What has happened to our fellow-feeling, that simple impulse of feeling for the suffering among us? It will be easy for those who should have been in the know to brush aside these reports as one of those alarming Press reports without foundation.
While such approach will save face for them, it will equally brush aside help that could have been available from Kenyans and even willing members of the international community.
The fact that few parents reached Eldoret market to offer their children for barter should not be regarded as an isolated case either but should be seen a symptom of a major problem that must be tackled as fast as possible.
In our view, Kenyans' <ea/>harambee spirit should be evoked to help save lives in Turkana District. The Turkana experience should be seen as a shame to the society and to absolve ourselves of this shame, we should all launch <ea/>harambee for humanity. 
</I>
<I> <h> Education system expected too much </h>
Right from its inception in 1985, the 8-4-4 system of education has been bedevilled with controversy and has, over the years, developed into an agonising phenomenon to become one of the hottest political issues in the country.
It had to be political, since an education system is at the core of a nation's life and determines the course of its future development. Education is also the most crucial factor in one and every family's future prosperity; the key element which will decide success or failure.
The admission by the Minister for Education, Mr Joseph Kamoto, that there were weaknesses in the 8-4-4 system which necessitated review, is only surprising in that it has taken eight years for education authorities to respond to genuine and overwhelming public dissatisfaction with a fundamental national policy.
Apprehension over the 8-4-4 system, the concept and its applicability to the Kenyan situation began immediately the policy paper was published, well before it was implemented.
Unfortunately the genuine concern then expressed by those who, in their various ways were competent to comment on education matters, was misinterpreted, politicised and sold to the public as unpatriotic.
One of the most common accusations made against those who expressed dissatisfaction with the system was that they were selfish, well-to-do people who did not wish to see the benefits of education extended to other Kenyans. Little effort was made to examine whether the criticisms had any merit. Silence on the issue was imposed under the risk of the most severe censure. The result on the education system has been adverse and in some cases devastating.
It is not that the aims and objectives of the 8-4-4 system were not noble and well- intentioned. No one should be accused of trying to destroy the country's education system or do harm to the children of the future of the nation.
According to the rationale published in 1984: "The 8-4-4 system, with its emphasis on technical and vocational education, will ensure that students graduating at every level have some scientific and practical knowledge that can be used for either self-employment, salaried employment or for further training.
"In other words," the document continued "primary school leavers should be able to enter the world of work without having to go to secondary school and secondary school leavers should be able to do the same without necessarily having to go to university."
Noble aims indeed, but what about the practicability; the enormous human and material resources that would be needed to secure these objectives? What effect would such a fundamental departure have on the whole philosophy of education?
Many of those concerned pointed to the confusion of education and training that was inherent in the system, especially in its application to the earliest years of learning.
To the purists, education is the development of the mind into an instrument capable of seeking truth and logic in an enabling family or school environment. Training, on the other hand, is the development of skills, useful in research, trades and professions. It also happens that interest and talent in particular skills is a highly individual affair, not easily taught collectively.
By trying to achieve the two at the same time, the 8-4-4 system ended up with a vast curriculum which often tried to combine subjects which had little or nothing to do with each other.
But it is undoubtedly the load that the system placed on the student, the teacher, the school, the parent and ultimately the community that 8- 4-4 had its most telling effects.
The workload on the student became almost unbearable, with children at primary school level having to burn the midnight oil to try and keep up with prep and revision, some of them ending up physically and mentally exhausted to a suicidal level.
In addition to this, students had to undergo intensive private tuition over weekends and holidays if they expected to pass tests and examinations.
As Mr Kamotho belatedly admitted, teachers had not been adequately prepared for the subjects involved in the time available. Equipment and material necessary to deal with practical skill subjects was not there, especially in poor rural schools.
Despite the appreciation by parents and the community generally that education was a burden which had to be shared with the authorities and their willingness to contribute individually or on <ea/>harambee basis, the burden was still too heavy.
The blemishes of the 8-4-4 system must deliver one crucial message to the country's leaders. Public criticism of a national policy should always be listened to without imputing ill motive. Had this happened eight years ago, Kenya's education system would have been the richer. 
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<I> <h> Foreign aid stalemate worsens the situation </h>
THE British Government appears to have made an unequivocal decision to support the stand of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as regards the resumption of donor funding to Kenya.
According to reports from London, British investors, many of whom have substantial interests in this country have failed to persuade the government of Prime Minister John Major to relax the suspension of balance of payments support which took effect in November 1991. The government appears to have taken the position that, whatever losses British companies might incur as a result of its decision, the Kenya government must be persuaded, nay forced, to accept the terms and conditionalities which have been laid down by the Fund and the Bank.
But the government, economists and academics in the Third World see this issue very differently. Speaking shortly after the government had formally rejected the economic recovery package proposed and sponsored by the Fund last month, President Moi said: "As a sovereign nation, we will no longer submit to economic arm-twisting of any kind." In his formal statement announcing the rejection, the Minister for Finance, Mr Musalia Mudavadi, said that acceptance of the major planks of the IMF package would lead to the instant collapse of a large number of companies, mass redundancies and massive recession affecting both the public and private sector.
The government has a social responsibility to the people of this country which it cannot easily surrender to foreign organisations such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund,' he said.
Last week, a Washington DC-based Think Tank, the Schiller Institute, launched an international campaign noting President Moi's courage in standing up to the World Bank and the IMF in the interests of the people of Kenya and called upon other Third World leaders to follow the President's lead. The campaign is disseminating the message that the IMF demands are "genocidal" and that they are being supported by Anglo-American political institutions bent on ensuring that Kenya disintegrates into another Somalia.
Even without the benefit of the Schiller Institute's apocalyptic imagery, it is beginning to seem to many people within and without this country that Western governments and multilateral organs have not fully appreciated just how enormous and how delicate the country's socio-political problems are. It is becoming increasingly clear that our friends in the West are, mainly by default, prescribing solutions to a set of socio-political problems which they really do not understand.
It is easy to cough these prescriptions in sweet-sounding, "economically-correct" terms. Liberalise interest rates. Open up your markets to foreign competition. Remove all exchange controls. Sack a half <-/or> your Civil Service. That is all very good, text-book economics. The problem is that nations do not live by economics alone.
In a country where close to 40 per cent of all able and willing men and women are jobless, it becomes politically untenable to sanction and then champion the precipitate sacking of 50,000 civil servants. It becomes virtually immoral to do this at the behest of foreigners whose understanding of one's society is, at best, suspect.
In a country where median and modal rates of income hardly exceed Shs 2,000 it becomes both politically and morally untenable to support bread, flour and sugar prices which alone account for over 30 per cent of a worker's income. With inflation already beyond 40 percent a month, it becomes hard, to say the least, to accept prescriptions which would raise it to 80 per cent within a month.
The West should give <-/as> a chance to put our social-political house in order. We understand our circumstances very well. The suspension of balance of payments support in 1991 has taught all of us many lessons. One of these is that pushing nations to the wall does not always bear fruit. 
</I>
<I> <h> US action against Sudan disturbing </h>
QUESTIONS are being asked whether the United States did not act too hastily on Wednesday in placing Sudan on the list of nations it accuses of sponsoring terrorism.
The evidence produced to justify the decision taken by Secretary of State Warren Christopher is at best tenuous and would perhaps only satisfy what Americans conceive to be their role in international relations. It would not stand up to rigorous examination by independent minds.
When Sudan firmly denied the US charge that the cumulative weight of the evidence establishes that Sudan is providing repeated support for international terrorism," and challenged the United States to come up with a single case of a Sudanese national involved in a terrorist act, the State Department spokesman, Mike McCurry, was evasive.
Mr McCurry said: "It's not so much a question of looking at specific acts; It's a pattern of allowing some type of activity training, providing an avenue for funding - that is done with the knowledge of the Sudanese leadership that leads us to believe that this constitutes state sponsorship.
This simply won't do. Diplomacy and healthy international relations cannot be conducted on suspicion, especially now that the Cold War has ended. It even leads to apprehension that the United States might be tempted to position as the only superpower in the world today.
Widespread condemnation was voiced when on Sunday, June 27, this year US warships unleashed cruise missiles at the Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad in retaliation for an alleged plot by Iraq to assassinate former President George Bush while on a visit to Kuwait.
Many people - with a measure of justification - saw the attack as 'an act of terrorism' and wondered whether - in the absence of concrete evidence - to invoke the name of a former president to commit an act of war was responsible diplomacy.
Others saw it for what it probably was: A domestic palliative to assuage the American public and prop up President Bill Clinton's sagging popularity after his disastrous start at the White House.
With the departure of Republicans from the White House, it had been hoped that the democratic administration would demonstrate greater sensibility in international affairs and refrain from the gang-ho tactics of dealing with smaller nations, like the kidnapping of Manuel Noriega - drug trafficker or not. It is accepted that international crimes like terrorism and drug trafficking must be handled in a concerted manner if they are to be eliminated, but then why the double standards?
Libya is on the 'terrorist' list - together with Iran, Iraq, Syria, Cuba and North Korea - to which Sudan has now been consigned. Libya has had a long association with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in terms of funding and training.
Yet the Irish lobby is so strong in the United States that no politician aiming for national office dare raise this connection. They will roundly condemn Libya's terrorist activities elsewhere and often call for sympathy and understanding - if not outright support - for the IRA.
The United States action against Sudan is, by the State Department's own admission, largely symbolic. It makes Sudan ineligible for non- humanitarian US aid and for commercial sales of US arms or technology that could equip terrorists. It also requires Washington to veto World Bank loans to Khartoum.
Sudan, however, receives nothing but some US humanitarian aid and commercial deals are minor. But that is beside the point. A more important aim is to provoke US allies to act similarly and isolate Sudan.
More disturbing is the continued American tendency to wield a big stick at smaller nations; the propensity of Washington to confuse national goals and international ones. 
<&/> The Standard 20/8/93
</I>
<I> <h> What's the reason for this dollar business? </h>
A ROUTINE advertisement which appeared in these pages on Tuesday had it that the Kenya Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (KP&TC) charges for all international calls will be pegged to the United States dollar with effect from this month. The exchange rate ruling as of the last working day of the previous month will be applied to all the billings. According to the notice, telephone charges for each minute to all countries within the Preferential Trade Area (PTA) will be US $3.08, while those for the rest of Africa will be US $4.60. A one- minute telephone call to any European city, from Belfast to Naples, will also cost US $4.60, exactly the same as a call from Nairobi to Abidjan, Cote d'lvoire.
Calls to Latin America and the Far East will cost US $ 6.11 a minute as will those to the Caribbean and the rest of Asia. A telephone call to Vancouver, Canada, will cost exactly the same as one to Lamaca or Nicosia in Cyprus, comparatively only a stone's throw away from here.
As the dollar rate against the shilling will vary every day, turning these figures into shillings is not a particularly helpful exercise but nevertheless, at yesterday's rates, one needs Shs 275 to make a one-minute telephone call to Naples, Accra or San Diego, California. A similar call to Arusha, Tanzania, will cost Shs 184, as will one to Francistown, Botswana.
For the mandarins at the headquarters of the KP&TC these figures probably make a lot of sense. To the rest of us mortals who will be paying these bills anyway, they are singularly absurd. Unless basic economic principles have been turned on their head, it is not possible to justify such astounding high prices for a service which cannot cost even half as much. We all know that such absurd pricing for international calls is not the preserve of the KP&TC. Other telecommunications giants such as International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (ITT) and British Telecom also routinely charge ridiculous prices for international calls. Apparently, distance, as we understand it, has nothing to do with these tele-economics. The price of a call from New York to London is nearly four times that of one from New York to Los Angeles, a comparable distance.
But the absurdity of the KP&TC notice does not end there. The charges have been pegged on a foreign currency; the United States dollar <-/alright>, but a foreign currency all the same. Why should a Kenyan corporation, and a State- controlled one at that, want to peg the price of its services to Kenyans on a foreign currency? Why should a Kenya citizen, say in Busia, have to glean the dollar rates every month to get an idea of what his or her telephone bill will look like?
There is a lot of absurdity in tele-economics all over the world, but these dollar-pegged charges could easily take pride of place. Now, as ever, the general public is helpless against the all-encompassing tele-monopoly of the KP&TC. If the KP&TC notice is implemented, as it surely will, telephone prices will not only remain artificially high but they will become so variable that realistic estimates for telephone expenses will be virtually impossible to develop.
Perhaps there is a good reason why the KP&TC could like us to pay dollar pegged charges. Given the nature of the industry, this is most unlikely. But if there is, the KP&TC management could do very well to take some more space in the papers to explain why it has come to this turn. If we have to pay dollar-pegged charges for simple services provided by a State corporation, how long will it be before we are asked to pay for those services in real dollars? And how long will it be before other State corporations follow suite? 
</I>
<I> <h> Airport personnel we do not need </h>
Tourism has over the last few years overtaken coffee as the country's main foreign exchange earner. More and more tourists have been visiting this country mainly because of its attractions compared to the rest of the continent.
The majority of these tourists enter the country through the airports in Nairobi and Mombasa. The government has put a lot of effort in improving means of communication in the country. Airfields and airports rank high among these developments. Despite these efforts, there have been many complaints not only by tourists but also by local people concerning the conditions of major airports. 
</I>
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<I> <h> Ford leaders should not confuse Kenyans </h>
Controversies and confrontations appear to have become a way of life for the opposition political parties since Kenya started its long journey to pluralism. Opposition leaders have urged for the resignation of the Kanu Government, staged illegal strikes and recently called for voter registration boycott.
Unfortunately for them and fortunately for those who wish to see Kenya continue playing a leading role in her efforts to bring about peaceful democratic and political change, all these attempts to incite <ea/>wananchi have miserably failed.
<ea/>Wananchi are not about to be swayed by those seeking political power through shortcuts.
While Kenyans watched in disbelief as opposition leaders ridiculed the appointment of Justice Zacheaus Chesoni as chairman of the Electoral Commission, the voter registration exercise continued satisfactorily and at the end of it all, close to eight million voters are now equipped with their voting card considered the only weapon for the voter to fight for his democratic right.
As the squabbles and infighting continue within the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD) as the party faces grassroots elections, it was strange that the party which advocated boycott of voter registration suddenly found the voters cards as valuable documents to use during the Ford grassroot election which kicks off next month.
Ford shamelessly announced that those wishing to participate in the party's grassroots elections needed only to produce a voters' card fearing that the use of Ford membership card would favour some candidates who are being accused of bent to rig the Ford elections.
We commend the speed with which Justice Chesoni acted to warn against the illegal move by Ford leaders, particularly his reminder that the Electoral Commission was not mandated to assist any political party to organise itself and the use of voters card by any organisation, political, religious, professional or social for any purpose is illegal.
It does not require much intelligence to know the risks involved and how the use of voters cards could cause major political confusion in an electorate that may not be well informed. We are at a loss to imagine that opposition parties which urged <ea/>wananchi to boycott the voter registration have suddenly come out of their slumber and now want to use the cards to save them from a major embarrassment.
Why has Ford taken too long to call for grassroots elections? The opposition parties have wasted valuable time calling senseless strikes and boycotts and calling for caretaker government yet they knew they had no mandate from their so-called supporters to lead them. They have now woken up to the realities of life and find it embarrassing to do the cleansing exercise to know who are their real supporters. This is exactly why Kanu refused to sit together with a group of people who elected themselves as interim officials of the opposition parties. They found the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCC) a willing tool to use in propagating their desire to discredit Kanu and the Kenya Government, an exercise that proved futile.
Although the opposition leaders have now dropped the idea of using voters cards in their grassroot election, who knows what else these desperate power-hungry individuals are likely to come up with as preparations for the multi- party polls continue.
Kenyans are anxiously awaiting for the announcement of election timetable. President Moi has already made it clear that the election will be free and fair, and even as Kanu President, he will not support one candidate against the other.
That is how it should be and let opposition parties stop confusing the electorate. 
</I>
<I> <h> We must boost Aids awareness </h>
In 1984 there was only one reported case in Kenya. In July, this year, there were 27,000 full-blown cases, thousands of deaths that were not reported and another 750,000 potential cases of the disease - Aids.
Only a year or so ago, Kenya was at the forefront of nations that have taken the threat of Aids so seriously that age-old taboos against discussing sex had to be set aside to let people know what devastation this disease could wreak on the entire country.
It, therefore, must have come to many people as a shock to hear yesterday that the Aids programme in Kenya has fallen by the wayside and is not as successful in educating the public about the disease as it was some time ago.
Indeed, public awareness about Aids today has dimmed to the level where people not in daily contact with the sick think it has somehow been contained.
When Paul Wachira, the deputy director of the National Youth Service, says the Aids programme has failed because people do not practise what they are taught, he means the entire approach to the problem needs a rethink. Millions of shillings have already been poured into an Aids awareness programme, probably the most successful part of the campaign.
That happened despite the fact that Africa, the continent most hard-hit by the scourge, gets the least money from international Aids committees and agencies.
So why are people resorting to using cattle dip chemicals to alleviate the pain of Aids-induced sores as reported in the press yesterday? Obviously something is not quite right at the National Aids Committee which was set up in 1987.
It means the programme has moved from direct contact with the people at risk and shifted to the elevated levels of conferences and seminars which yield nothing for the suffering but plenty of material for international scholars and alarmists who delight in telling the world that Aids will wipe Africans off the face of the earth in the coming century.
Kenya needs another blanket awareness programme to prick people out of their complacency and explain, once more, the many ways that the disease can be acquired. For one, it should now be clear to all that the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is not gender confined in that it does not only happen to homosexuals.
Around East Africa, said to be the hardest-hit region, Aids is primarily a heterosexual disease and is spread through normal intercourse between a man and a woman. And unlike sexually transmitted diseases like <-/gonorrhea>, Aids cannot be treated or cured by antibiotics or cattle dip chemicals although the presence of these curable diseases makes the infection of Aids that much more likely.
Simple facts like these are what must be repeated to the public. The major Aids conference held in Amsterdam earlier this year <-/ominiously> warned of a conspiracy of silence around the world that would have Aids relegated to the less active sections of the medical world on account of its lack of a cure despite a decade of concerted experiments.
We must never let this disease sink into our complacency, for Kenya, indeed East Africa, has one of the youngest populations in the world, with the majority of those dying from the disease being between the ages of 16 and 50.
A warning has already been issued that donated blood in banks around the country shows a high level of infection. Health Minister Jeremiah Nyagah asserts that Aids screening for blood donated around the country has been successfully done, but his is a blanket statement that needs to be supported by facts.
Kenya's paralytic public health services are not famed for this sort of efficiency. Experience at any rural district hospital will reveal a cavalier attitude among most of the staff in situations in which the Aids virus can be transmitted. This is especially pathetic in casualty departments which deal with the patching up of sores and wounds.
The Health Ministry and the National Aids Committee should also let Kenyans know what is being done to identify the new Aids strain that has been identified in the West and which does not show up on the usual Elisa blood screening test. We need more information, Mr Nyagah, before more people resort to herbalists and cattle dips. 
</I>
<I> <h> Ethiopians want food, not weapons </h>
The lives of four million people in northern Ethiopia are currently suspended on a thin thread following an outbreak of fierce fighting between government forces and the rebel Eritrean People's Liberation Front at the port of Massawa, the main gateway for food aid to the north and the south.
Relief suppliers are now seeking alternative routes to reach the provinces of Tigray, Wollo, Reitrea and Gordon, where millions are facing starvation. This has been no easy task in a country that has known no peace in almost three decades and it is now feared that unless fighting stops so that normal transportation of food can resume, a catastrophe similar to the one witnessed during the 1984/85 drought that hit some parts of Africa might ravage Ethiopia.
The occurrence of such a misfortune would once <-/gain> rivet the world's attention to Africa with the ever-persistent question: are military confrontations worth the loss of life, large-scale destruction of property and uncertainty they cause? Yet Ethipoia, a country in a continent faced with serious economic problems, continues to fight a war that has been recorded as Africa's longest running.
Understandably, global peace requires a multilateral endeavour. Hence, Ethiopia would not be required to stem this violence solely on her own. This is why there has been mediation between the EPLF and the government, such as the recent talks in Nairobi and Rome. On the same basis, no country can rightly say which side is to blame for the bloody clashes.
However, as some countries watch from a distance hope still remains that the warring parties will soon see the futility of this war and start working towards reaching a compromise. It is disheartening that after making some progress during the preliminary talks in Nairobi late last year, the situation is deteriorating. What then can be expected out of the main talks if neither side is willing to make concessions and reach a conciliatory point?
One thing that is clear is that unless the warring parties are genuinely interested in working towards achieving peace, they will never find a solution to their problem.
The saddest aspect of the Ethiopian situation is fragile and in dire need of resources as the country is, some outside forces have taken advantage of the hostilities to escalate the war. By supplying weapons, such forces have ensured that this country knows no single moment of peace. But for how long will Ethiopia remain a receiver of something as basic as food because of a seemingly endless battle? 
Our hope is that what has so far been achieved at the various peace talks will not go to waste. So far the gesture has been worth the effort and it would be devastating for the people of Ethiopia if the present tension was allowed to become chronic.
Maybe Ethiopia and any other country in a similar situation could learn from changes sweeping through Eastern Europe, that there are ways of achieving more for the majority that do not require the use of guns. 
</I>
<I> <h> KPDA's strike can only worsen things </h>
During these difficult times, the last thing Kenyans would like to see is an action that is likely to add an extra burden on their shoulders. Already, most of the people have been stretched to the limit as a result of the ever-increasing prices of commodities.
To the ordinary Kenyan, the strike threat by the Kenya Petroleum Dealers Association issued on Thursday, is another attempt to inflict even more suffering on them. This is because the extra profits the dealers are asking for are likely to be passed on to the consumers in the form of a price increase.
If the dealers had been arguing that they do not make any profits from selling petroleum products, the reaction from the public may have been more sympathetic. However, in this case, we have been told by the Government and the dealers themselves that the issue is the size of the profits.
According to a statement issued last night by the <-/Permament> Secretary for Energy, Mr Chrispus Mutitu, the petrol dealers make a profit of Sh650 on every 1,000 litres of petrol sold.  
</I>
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<I> <h> The clerics' Easter message was timely </h>
THREE of our clergymen over Easter conveyed a common message with a common thrust in their sermons. They all decried the social ills that are slowly but painfully getting entrenched in our society. The head of the Catholic Church, Maurice Cardinal Otunga, urged Kenyans to fight corruption, greed and inefficiency. Archbishop Manasses Kuria of the Church of the Province of Kenya (CPK), however, opted to pray for those attacking the church. And in his usual self, Bishop Alexander Kipsang Muge of the Eldoret diocese of the CPK attacked both politicians and churchmen who speak loudly against tribalism but are the perpetrators of the evil. The three prelates have said this before, albeit in different tones and circumstances.
But of import this time round is the timing of their message. In retrospect, the crucifixion of Jesus was meant to rid mankind of these very evils. Even then, the issues raised by the priests are the same evils that have been condemned by our political leaders on many occasions and in different forums. There is, therefore, really nothing new in their condemnation of corruption, tribalism and immorality.
What we expect the churchmen to do now, as fishers of men, is change the attitudes of those immersed in these social evils. We have heard many times leaders - including clerics - condemn greedy people who grab property from poor and helpless <ea/>wananchi. There is the usual talk of some public servants who are only interested in enriching themselves.
We are inclined to support Archbishop Kuria's proposal to his colleagues during his sermon that the time has come for churches to pray for those engaged in corruption and other vices so God can save them from these sins. The question posed by the archbishop - "Are those who man these offices not among us here today?" - is an important one. We are told that 80 per cent of our population is made up of Christians. If this is so, why should we have so many cases of corruption referred to every day, everywhere?
In this country, there is a tendency for leaders to go to church or any other place of worship on Sunday. Presumably they do so because they fear God and, therefore, fear doing evil. But we ask the same question the archbishop asked: Why should we call ourselves Christians and yet commit all these vices? We could as well ask another: Why go to church, anyway, if we do not want to be upright? There is one possibility why Christians are caught at this crossroads. There is the search for wealth and there is the clamour for power at whatever expense. These two cannot allow one's morals to pass muster when the facilities are scarce and competitive. Coupled with this is lack of patriotism that end up overshadowing the search for decency and love for one another.
We are tempted to believe the clergy has now identified the right approach in moulding the character of their flock and rear an upright following. This is, of course, possible only if the churchmen stop fighting among themselves and also show respect for the political leadership. But if the clerics appoint themselves as the only genuine instruments for change and as spokesmen for the down-trodden, then we are talking in circles.
The lesson we can learn from the Easter message is that all Kenyans have a responsibility to mould a united nation, devoid of antagonism, social evil and personality cult. We have seen both the clergy and the secular leadership err in many areas of human endeavour. We hope that through concerted efforts by all people of goodwill, we can create a peaceful and upright society. 
</I>
<I> <h> Okullo using pulpit for tribal crusade </h>
ANGLICAN Bishop Henry Okullo of Maseno South professes to be a man of the cloth. The Right Reverend Okullo is on the record as saying churches, as institutions, cannot be members of political parties. The church, he added, was for just government by Kanu, Ford, DP, SDP, or Kenya. He then added that Kenyans must evaluate where they had come from and assess where they were headed for.
Bishop Okullo then said that the political parties should sell ideas, not trade insults, if they hope to win over voters to their cause.
The same Dr Okullo last Sunday revealed that what he has been preaching all the time was nothing but hot air. In Kisumu, the bishop openly came out on the side of presidential hopeful and fellow Luo, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, and castigated the Government for apparently delaying the registration of Jaramogi's Agip House Ford faction. The bishop then blamed the ruling party, Kanu, for investigating ethnic violence in Rift Valley, Nyanza and Western provinces.
Bishop Okullo is a pillar of one of the largest Christian churches in Kenya. Were the utterances he made on Sunday a reflection of thinking within that church or were they the unmasking of the bishop as a tribal supremacist? He then alluded that Mr Martin Shikuku, top official at Ford Muthithi faction and deadly rival to Jaramogi, was in cahoots with Kanu in a plot to finish Ford. Are those the words of a disinterested man of the cloth whose only concern is justice?
In June, this year, the bishop advised Gor Mahia, a football club with strong Luo base, to return some Sh2000,000 given to the club by Youth for Kanu '92 organisation. Bishop Okullo had kept quiet while the team, of which he says he is an ardent supporter, solicited funds from the public to finance a trip to Cameroon. He then opened a bank account to receive donations for the club and asked that he be invited as guest of honour in a funds drive for the club.
The bishop knew well in advance that the club was in a financial bind, yet he waited till an organisation stepped forward to aid it. What he particularly abhorred was that the donor organisation, the YK'92, is a part of Kanu, quite oblivious to the fact that the party commands a respectable following among the Luo. Would the bishop have reacted in the same manner if the club involved was based on some other tribe? What would he have said if the club in trouble was AFC Leopards which has a massive Luyia support? Would he have termed the donation "blood money" as he did in the case of Gor?
Experienced with the political <slang/>wanna-bes like Bishop Okullo indicates he would have pointed a long finger and accused the Luyia en masse of being in league with other tribes in a bid to keep Kanu in power.
He has finally been revealed as a man who thinks only about the day his tribe will come to power and a man who would rather preach than practice. Bishop Okullo's open alliance with Jaramogi and the <-/drival> he spewed on the reputation of Kanu make him no better than the politicians he is fond of castigating who are given to calling their supporters to arms in the name of politics.
Time is neigh for the bishop to stand up and become counted. He should stop hiding behind the cloth and declare that he will enter politics, for what he has practised for years in the name of Christianity is nothing but partisan politics.
Let him go out to the people and solicit their vote if he wants to be taken as a legitimate representative of Kenyans. Let him go out and slug it out with politicians and sit in the National Assembly where charges like the one he made on Sunday are met with some respect.
The bishop should know that Kenyans are not stupid and they realise he did not utter a single word when Jaramogi sought funds from Mr Charles Njonjo, a man who has made several derogatory statements about the Luo community in the past. Let the bishop also know that we are aware he has not said anything about the terrorists who form the group known as Faso. This group has emphatically stated it is in support of a Jaramogi presidency and has gone so far as to say it would not allow the old man to <-/relinguish> his claim to State House even if he wished to.
We would like to know what the bishop will do now that the two Ford factions are to be registered as different political parties. Will he voice support for both factions and wish Mr Kenneth Matiba <-/godspeed> in the race to State House? Alas! we know he will not. 
</I>
<I> <h> Has the truth now dawned on envoy? </h>
IF there is one art American <-_politician><+_politicians> have perfected, it is that of double talk. A mixture of ambiguous, often meaningless words, empty, deceptive gibberish.
The same breed of politicians, including their staff in foreign missions, also engage in double think, that deliberate, sometimes perverse way of embracing and accepting facts or principles.
This double talk and double think has lately become quite fashionable among the officials of the United States Embassy in Nairobi. It came out clearly last Thursday when Ambassador Smith Hempstone was addressing the American Business Association of Kenya, during which time he lectured Kenyans on what political and economic reforms they must embark on if they expect economic assistance to start flowing again. Mr Hempstone, who sees himself as a crusader of democracy, not just in Kenya but all over Africa and who is in the process of packing to leave for home, was telling the American businessmen that the US Government had accepted Kenya's assurance to stage free and fair elections.
But in the same breath, he launched a litany of sins of <-/ommission> and commission <-/purpotedly> committed by the Government to "prove" that nothing has been done to ensure free and fair elections. The only positive step that the Government has taken thus far, according to ambassador, is the invitation of American election observers.
His denial that he and the US Government supports the opposition are mere words which are not supported by past actions and statements. So is the statement by the Embassy's Counsellor for Political Affairs, Mr Gerald Wesley Scott, when he was telling Nairobi Kenya African National Union (KANU) branch chairman Clement Gachanja that the US was not opposed to President Moi as Head of State as long as he wins in a free and fair election and that the US will not interfere with the electoral process.
Despite his denial, the ambassador has spent a lot of time and effort giving support, guidance and ammunition to some of the opposition party leaders and now admits that the opposition (read Ford) is in disarray for the simple reason that his effort to unite the party to remove President Moi and Kanu has miserably failed.
One can understand the bitterness and disappointment of the ambassador. He gave refuge to young lawyers running from the long arm of the law and safe passage to those who sought to go into self-imposed exile. He ensured that opposition activists, some of them with criminal records, were given awards and money by the so-called human rights groups. He organised the bankrolling of magazines that supported the opposition to fight the Government. He organised trips for opposition leaders to sell their ideas and their country to the Congress. He held countless meetings and night parties in an attempt to reconcile the factions of Ford. He ensured that funds donated by foreign organisations went to the "right" people in the opposition. All this time, he was issuing statements and making speeches lambasting the Kanu Government for all manner of ills, an exercise aimed at giving the opposition ammo as well as credence.
Not long ago Mr Hempstone acted as if the success of Ford at the polls was a foregone conclusion as was the ouster of President Moi and Kanu from power. Today, as he prepares to leave the country, he thinks differently.When he was addressing American businessmen, he said: "President Moi is a shrewd man. He loves his country. . 
</I>
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<I> <h> Intolerable act against Odinga </h>
From evidence adduced even by his closest aides, Ford presidential candidate Kenneth Matiba is characterized of late by a great deal of rigidity and immoderation. But not long ago he made a statement that went down very well among Kenyans who think with their brains and not with their emotions and stomachs. He said that he would be prepared to work amicably with Daniel arap Moi should the latter be re-elected President in a free and fair ballot.
Yet a statement so simple was conveniently misinterpreted by Mr Matiba's enemies in his own Ford party to mean that if Mr Moi wins the election legitimately, then Mr Matiba will rejoin Kanu. Of course, it will be his prerogative to rejoin Kanu, but, quite obviously, that was not what he meant by saying he would work amicably with Mr Moi. The multi- party system often necessitates heated exchanges of words between whichever is the ruling party and whichever is in the opposition.
But it also requires that -- in the higher interests of the state and the people as a whole -- the two (or whatever number of parties is parliament) work most closely on many fronts as long as all of them are agreed that the ruling party has been elected properly and in a manner that satisfies all the constitutional requirements. In our view, this was what Mr Matiba was trying to say.
And it is the only attitude which we urge the leaders and followers of all the parties to take. Though Kanu, with reasons which could not be dismissed outright, was once reluctant to allow the multi-party system to be introduced, the fact is that it has changed its mind, which means that its leaders must gear themselves for the possibility of another party coming to power.
Likewise, the opposition parties must brace themselves up for the fact that Kanu may take the majority of the votes, not only for parliamentarians but also for the President. At the moment, this is what many members of the opposition itself are saying, basing themselves on the chaos that besets Ford and the circumscribed manner in which the Democratic Party is operating.
But it often looks as if ours is hope against hope. Even before the General Election date is announced, there is so much intolerance in all the parties -- but especially in Ford and Kanu. Many Ford leaders have been quoted as saying that they will not accept Mr Moi's presidency again, no matter what the electorate says. At least two have been quoted as saying that if Mr Moi is re-elected, Ford will organize national turbulence of such a magnitude as to overthrow him.
One movement calling itself "Ford Army Security Organization (Faso)" is very busy writing letters to Kanu activists -- for Kanu also has "activists" (though you wouldn't know it from the pages of the daily Press) -- threatening to kill them. What the organization hopes to achieve by such dastardly behaviour no one knows. A Ford leader, James Orengo, has recently dissociated Ford from Faso, but Faso needs to be condemned by Ford leaders higher up the ladder.
However, Ford is not alone in this. The other day a Kanu leader had Ford chief Oginga Odinga thrown out of a church gathering for the simple reason that Odinga does not drink tea from the same cup as Kanu's leaders. It was extremely sad. It means that if we belong to different parties we cannot now worship God in the same churches, or watch football in the same stadiums, or attend dances in the same ballrooms, or sit in the same school or university classrooms, and so on.
What, then, is the use of the multi-party system if the parties cannot agree to rules that transcend and apply to them all as parties? If death threats, refusal to admit political rivals to what are only social gatherings, insults based on ethnic cultural practices -- such as circumcision and extraction of teeth -- etc., if this is what the multi-party activists have been fighting for all these long years, then we are afraid Kenya is heading for national suicide unless all the parties take conscious measures to stem this tide of destruction.
Let us, by all means, compete as fiercely as we want to for political supremacy. But let us do it with a much deeper sense of maturity and  responsibility. Let us stop this abuse of the  freedoms of expression, assembly and movement  which it has taken us so much trouble to wrest  for ourselves. Let us heed Kenneth Matiba's  words that multi-party democracy presupposes  that all are competing through co-operation at  certain levels because anything else would make  a mockery of the pluralist system. 
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<I> <h> Lesson Kenya can learn from Angola </h>
Jonas Savimbi, for <-/along> time the agent of right-wing Western and South African forces in Angola, continues to behave in a manner true to form. After spending 16 futile years in a foreign-aided attempt to overthrow Luanda's legitimate Government of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), he has recently tried to save face by agreeing to come to a round table.
The round table itself was urged and sponsored by some of the very forces - including the United States - which used to finance and arm the guerrilla operations of his Union for the Total Liberation of Angola (UNITA). The set of negotiations, which took place in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, was recently concluded with a set of agreements signed, among other people, by Savimbi himself.
But like every "nationalist" pampered by dirty money, he apparently accepted the agreements - including Angola's first ever multi-party election - only on condition that he would be the victor. The chief point about the multi- party system, that any party can win and that all the defeated parties must respect that victory as long it <grammar> has been carried out in a fair manner, had never crossed Savimbi's mind.
Did he perhaps predicate his ambition to occupy the political throne on the assumption that the Western forces which have hitherto funded his treasonous activities would simply swallow any claim by him that the Government of President Eduardo dos Santos had rigged the polls?
It is an attitude we continue to see right in Kenya. It is that, since the ruling party has in the past been guilty of tampering with the polls to suit it, it will ipso facto rig even the coming General-Election. Of course, it might be tempted to do so. But it would be extremely ill-advised because it is precisely such an activity which has landed Kenya in its present insuperable political and economic difficulties.
What Jonas Savimbi (and whoever is tempted to meddle with the polls machinery in Kenya) are forgetting is that this time around the political climate in which the elections are taking place are totally different from in the past. In the past it has been a completely internal affair. And the consensus with which we began our independent life has led - even as the democratic instruments were being eroded - to near total absence of interest by independent individuals and bodies in inspecting our electoral practices.
That can no longer be the case. In a multiplicity of parties, the parties in opposition and many independent institutions will be looking with a microscope to ensure that the ruling party keeps its long fingers away from the ballot box. Moreover, often for totally ulterior motives, many official and unofficial individuals and institutions in the Western capitals will also be actively interested. The ruling party of any country will attempt to interfere with the polls only to its own detriment. That is most likely to be among the reasons why the Government of President Dos Santos kept itchy hands away from the ballot box to ensure that it was free and fair.
We have this latter statement - that the Angolan elections were free and fair - on the authority of none other than the self- interested Western individuals and institutions who "monitored" the balloting. They have reported to an interested international audience that President Dos Santos and his team have been elected in a very legitimate manner. If that were not the case, we would not now be witnessing the rare phenomenon of the Western forces themselves urging their former darling to accept defeat, abide by the Lisbon agreements and assume his role as leader of the official opposition party in the National Assembly.
It is a lesson that some individuals in Kenya's opposition, especially in Ford and Kenda, must learn. The individuals have been heard to make the tactless and impolitic statement that they will seek to overthrow the ruling party by force of arms even if the party wins in a fair manner. If they are basing this threat on the assumption that the Western forces that have supported them will support illegal activities by them even after they have been legitimately defeated, then they should strain their necks just a little more to see what is happening in Angola.
We reiterate what we have been saying for the last two weeks, that multi-partyism is meaningful only if all the parties are ready to accept the results of free and fair voting. For that reason, Kanu should accept the possibility of defeat and be ready to serve as the loyal opposition. For that reason, too, all opposition parties should strive only to see that the polls are clean and accept defeat - if that is the result - because they can see that the polls have been clean. Any wild and unsubstantiated claims about rigging will no longer impress Kenyan voters and international observers. 
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<I> <h> A few lessons for 'The Nation' </h>
Though the recent mass resignations from The Nation's newsroom seem to have a cause external to and apart from tribalism at the Nation Centre, the fact is that the Nation Group is top-heavy with one tribe. Though it is by no means true that the present management is what is responsible for the tribal lopsidedness, the fact remains that there is that disease in that publishing company which requires urgent treatment.
The Nation's editor, though Kikuyu, fully merits his recent appointment into that berth. He is among the ablest pressmen in this country today. Yet his reply the other day to accusations by politicians that The Nation has a "tribal agenda" left many loopholes through which malevolent and unscrupulous individuals can continue to hit The Nation below the belt.
The political charge that The Nation is there only to serve Kikuyu interests could very well be a "lie", as the editor asserted. But the fact remains that the degree of domination of that organization by one tribe is unjustifiable and unacceptable for a newspaper which is always ready with similarly pontifical commentaries against other organizations.
So, although the editors was justified in trying to clear his present management's name from the tribal sins of past managements, those who watched at close quarters as this domination was building up also expect the editor to publish a programme through which the publishing company is hoping to redress these injustices by certain managements in the past.
Without that the editor was still laying his company open to attack. And a rival daily newspaper, The Kenya Times - which the editor had accused of complicity in the "lie" against The Nation - took full advantage of just that fact to publish a list purporting to show that The Nation's newsroom is a tribal parish. The Kenya Times could have gone further to show the degree of domination in other departments.
It is not our intention to pat The Kenya Times on the back. A public war of words between two of the main news publications cannot augur well for journalism in this country. And, as our reporter shows on Page 4, the holier-than-thou attitude taken by The Kenya Times may itself invite public scrutiny.  
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