THIS IS THE CONSTITUTIONAL MOMENT:

A STATEMENT BY VICTIMS OF REPRESSION

We, former prisoners of conscience, political exiles and spouses, widows, parents, sons and daughters of former victims of KANU dictatorship under presidents Kenyatta and Moi have keenly and critically observed and actively participated in the developments towards the retirement of the enslaving independence constitution (with its myriad retrogressive amendments) and ushering in of a new, democratic one. As still gaping wounds of half a century of tyranny, we are both excited and alarmed. Excited because the cause for which we were jailed, tortured, ostracized by both the state and sections of society and economically marginalized is at the verge of turning the final bend. Alarmed because, determined as ever, the forces of tyranny, plunder and retrogression have once again regrouped in last ditch attempt to deny the people of Kenya their deserved prize of a new dawn of freedom and empowerment.

It is in view of the foregoing that we elect to highlight the following as Kenyans prepare to cast their vote for a new Constitution in August:

Our History has been that of Constant Struggle between Forces of Change and Those of Reaction

The Kenyan people take great pride in their long history of resistance to forces of foreign occupation and internal repression. This heroic history stretches way back from the struggles led by patriots like Yusuf bin Hassan in the 16th Century against Portuguese occupation to the current one for the realization of a new constitution based on democracy, social justice and subsidiarity. But the people of Kenya are also well aware that at each stage of the struggle, there have been forces of reaction and sabotage.

When patriotic Kenyans like Waiyaki wa Hinga, Me Katilili, Koitalel arap Samoei, Mwangeka, Odera Ulalo and others fought to resist the alienation of Kenyan land and enslavement of our people, the colonizing brigade found ready collaborators in the likes of Lenana, Mumia, Odera Akang’o and Tengecha.

On the workers front, we had progressive trade union leaders like Markhan Singh, Cege Kibacia and Fred Kubai pitted against reactionary forces coalescing around the Tom Mboya-fronted Kenya Federation of Labour. The Kenya Land and Freedom Army (Mau Mau) had its counterforce in the Homeguards and Komoreras.

In the post-independence Kenya, we had progressive forces revolving around Jaramogi Odinga, Bildad Kaggia and Pio Gama Pinto among others. They were opposed, harassed and detained without trial – some assassinated – by the reactionaries led by Kenyatta and Moi. These praxes had to be repeated at every stage of the struggle – in student leadership, in the churches and in the mosques.

It was, thus, no accident that when Kenyans could no longer bear with the repression of Moi-KANU regime and launched in earnest the struggle for restoration of multiparty democracy, Moi nad reactionary forces launched a vicious, semi-fascist outfit in the infamous Youth for KANU ’92.

The alignment of forces as currently witnessed is as natural as flies congregate around faeces.

Land is the Issue of Contention

At the centre of the National Question is land. Kenya inherited a highly skewed system of land ownership at independence in 1963. British colonialism in Kenya was not merely administrative. Rather, it was accompanied by massive and widespread land alienation for the benefit of settler agriculture. As a result the best agricultural land-the White Highlands and the adjacent rangelands were taken from the Africans, without compensation, and parceled out to white settlers. Colonial legislation was enacted to legalize this process. As a result, whole communities lost valuable land that they had occupied over generations. The customary land tenure systems under which Africans had guaranteed claims over the land they occupied were supplanted by the registration of individual title holders under the colonial system.

Independence failed to reverse this loss of African land. The colonial legislation protecting the rights of the land title holders was inherited by the first post-independence government of President Jomo Kenyatta. The Constitution negotiated at Lancaster House in London, provided for an elaborate protection of private property without reference to the history of its acquisition. The successive post-independence governments have continued to uphold the sanctity of privately owned land to the frustration of the large number of Kenyans who had been dispossessed through colonialism leaving them squatters on their ancestral land or landless poor. This situation demands an equitable land distribution process that is capable of providing livelihood opportunities to the landless poor as well as redressing colonial wrongs and re-establishing justice in the land sector.

As the struggle for independence ensued and the colonial rule looked destined to a sad chapter of history, a new ruling class with interest in landed property was quickly recruited from amongst African collaborators. With the help of the colonial state, the new gentry quickly occupied land belonging to entire communities – that had been herded into detention camps and concentration villages – and were awarded titles by the colonial authorities. Upon the attainment of independence, the new rulers could not relinquish their claim to these lands but came up with a scheme of settling the new landless in former settler areas (which had been alienated through force or treachery). It is instructive to observe that the epicentre of land-related clashes has been the agriculturally-rich Rift Valley region. This is no accident. Rift Valley is the most settled region of Kenya. It is also in the Rift Valley where communities like the Maasai, the Pokot and the Nandi have unresolved grievances over land ownership centred on historical injustices traceable to colonial occupation.

It was in the Rift Valley where British settlers alienated huge tracts of land from indigenous Kenyans (paying a mere 10 cents per acre to the crown, not to the owners). It was in the Rift Valley where the Maasai community was duped into signing a 100-year agreement with the British in 1904 and denied a hearing by Kibaki government (a successor to the colonial administration) in 2004 when the agreement had elapsed. It is in the Rift Valley where the Pokot were forcefully pushed out of their communal land.

Land grabbing, which has been used for political patronage, combined with land tenure reform, has concentrated mainly in freehold title registration without regard to distributive justice and has escalated further the oppression and marginalisation of the indigenous Rift Valley and coastal people.

The proposed constitution provides the people of Kenya with an opportunity to once for all address the issue of injustice in land ownership, tenure and utilization.

Empowering Women

Women have been the central pillars of our long struggle for emancipation. The history of our struggle against colonialism and neo-colonialism is incomplete without mention of the roles of Me Katilili, Moraa, Mary Nyanjiru, Field Marshall Muthoni, Micere Mugo and Wangari Maathai among others. Can we forget the mothers of political prisoners who bared it all at the Freedom Corner to have their sons freed? These are women who dared to speak the truth to power. Yet our women continue to be domestic slaves; because petty housework crushes, strangles, stultifies and degrades them, chains them to the kitchen and the nursery, and wastes their labour on barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-racking, crushing drudgery. The Proposed Constitution proposes to restore our women’s full rights and dignity and gives them a role at the Boardroom, at cabinet, at the farm and firm decision organs – beyond the bedroom, nursery and kitchen.

National Values and Principles of Governance

For the first time since the establishment of Kenya as a nation, national values are postulated in the Constitution and backed by a strong, comprehensive regime of human rights and freedoms. As persons who have been arrested arbitrarily and/or our families subjected to gross abuse of fundamental human rights and denied enjoyment of basic freedoms – including torture and inhuman treatment, detentions without trial, denial of rights to work, education and practice profession or trade – we fully endorse these values as espoused in the Proposed Constitution.

Citizen Moi Has No Moral Authority to Lecture Kenyans on New Constitution

As President for close to a quarter of a century, Daniel arap Moi became the example of tyranny in Africa and the world. Many young women and men are orphans because their parents were deprived of life as result of Moi’s reign of terror. Many are those who have been rendered landless due to Moi’s insatiable appetite for land. Scores of Kenyans met their early deaths and continue to die from lack of health facilities and drugs in hospitals, accidents caused by decayed physical infrastructure and hunger occasioned by corruption institutionalized by Moi and bequeathed to his KANU offspring. Moi and Moists have rubbished, opposed, sabotaged the quest for a democratic constitution all the way as Kenyans demanded it. Once again, Moi and his YK92 brigade have regrouped and are standing on the way of Kenyans who hunger for a new constitutional dispensation. As bleeding wounds of Moi terror rule, while we don’t begrudge Citizen Moi his right to express himself freely, his history of misrule does not qualify him to lecture Kenyans on what makes a good or bad constitution. Kenyans are better off without it such unsolicited counsel.

Dated this 6th day of June 2010 and signed:

Endorsed (so far) by:

Ms Wahu Kaara
Achoka Awori
Prof. Edward Oyugi
Paul Amina
Wachira Waihere
Njoroge Wanguthi
Paddy Onyango
Kiama Kaara
Zarina Patel
10. Komeja Msuya

11. Mwaura Kaara

12. Oduor Ong’wen

13. Dr Willy Mutunga

14. Zahid Rajan

15. Dr. Adhu Awiti

16. Mwandawiro Mghanga

17. Wachira Kamonji

18. G.C. Muraguri

19. Miguna Miguna

20. Boaz Waruku

21. Sophie Dola

22. Morris Odhiambo

23. Kawive Wambua

24. Kavetsa Adagala

25. Alice Kirambi

26. Rev. Timothy Njoya

27. Suba Churchil Meshack