Tag Archives: KANU

Where is the reporting on the Chinese Communist Party role in Kenya’s political competition for 2027?

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I am going to have to invest a significant effort to try to find what might be available on this critical topic but this has been a critical gap in the Kenyan and international media at least since the 2013 election.

While it is well understood and seen that the PRC has a large direct presence in Kenyan media, I continue to be amazed at the lack of coverage of the Chinese Communist Party’s “party building”, training and sponsorship functions in Kenya’s political ecosystem, especially in light of last year’s “woodchippering” of USAID which had been the leading donor supporting “Western multiparty democracy” as an alternative to single party rule since the end of the Cold War and Kenya’s “Second Liberation”.

CCP support was key, for example, to the efforts by the UhuRuto team in 2013/14 to create a consolidated Jubilee Single Party Government with a Party functions conducted directly by Government Cabinet Secretaries. Over the years we have seen politicians share pictures of gifts of “big red boxes” from Chinese diplomats without elaboration.

So where is the reporting and analysis from a Nairobi that is more and more an international and transnational hub and “home base” for reporters, analysts and all manner of players and interested parties not directly part of the CCP’s operations?

One year out, do any Kenyans doubt that William Ruto would use violence to avoid being the first Kenyan president to be found by the Electoral Commission to have lost re-election at the polls?

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I am too far removed from “the ground” in Kenya to be able to directly answer this question myself, but it is one that has to be asked by the UK and German governments leading this year’s democracy assistance “basket fund”, by all Kenyans of course, by foreigners and ex-pats working in democracy assistance or civil society efforts, etc.

To me, the factual underpinnings for any such belief (regarding election violence) seem conspicuously lacking from everything I know about Kenya, Kenyan politics, William Ruto specifically and his history since 1992’s re-election of Daniel arap-Moi when Ruto was a key KANU “Youth Winger”. That first multi -party and post-Cold War election was observed by the International Republican Institute (“IRI”) with funding from USAID after Moi rejected the request of George H.W. Bush’s Ambassador Hempstone to permit an International Election Observation Mission by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (“NDI”) and US democracy assistance involvement became a permanent feature.

Most recently the normal baseline of extrajudicial killings that appear to connect to issues of political power seems to be increasing. Again, I am at a great distance and not a source of facts or judgment about what Kenya’s main political players are doing just now, just a repository of the inconvenient context of recent decades in the lives of these men, their competition and their country (and mine).

Certainly for IRI, NDI and their funders at the National Endowment for Democracy the unique new context includes “January 6” which they denounced rightly and as was required of them at the time, with a new Trump II administration which “woodchippered” USAID, tried to eliminate NED, and has adopted the previously unprecedented practice of direct POTUS endorsement of some foreign presidential candidates on a seemingly ad hoc basis as to process, motive and timing.

Likewise the role of non-democratic actors in Kenya’s Presidential campaign will presumably be that much greater than in the past; those actors are unlikely to incentivize or pressure Ruto to adopt more thoroughly democratic norms.

Kenya 2007 election- Ambassador Ranneberger and Connie Newman at polling station Nairobi

What is the current status of Kenya’s Jubilee Party and the Communist Party of China (and why isn’t more being written on this)?

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On September 7, 2016, when the Jubilee Party was formed at State House as a “roll up” of parties forming the Jubilee coalition from the 2013 election, officials of the Chinese Communist Party were in honored attendance.

This followed the announcement the previous month, a year ahead of the 2017 vote, of a new Party-to-Party “working relationship”.

“Uhuru Party to work with Chinese Communist Party” The Standard, 21 Aug 2016:

Jubilee Party Steering Committee co-chairman Kiraitu Murungi announced that the two political outfits will work together for the benefit of its members and citizens of both countries.

. . . We are happy that we are going to sign a new chapter of political co-operation,” said the Meru Senator [Kiraitu Murungi] on Friday.

Kiraitu was accompanied by his co-chair Noah Wekesa and other members of the steering committee. He said the two parties share almost similar ideologies, pointing out that they are concerned with uniting people of their respective countries.

See this take from “This is Africa“: “The unexpected virtues of flirting with dictatorship: Why Kenya’s ruling coalition is getting cosy with China’s Communist Party“.

“The Position Uhuru Will Hold After 2022” Kenyans.co.ke 20 Jan 2018:

Speaking in Gatanga on Friday, [David] Murathe explained that President Kenyatta ‘would play a supervisory role’ as the party expected to form the next administration after the 2022 General Election.

“President Uhuru will still be the leader of our party even after his term ends,” Murathe declared.

He further revealed that a team from the Communist Party of China would be brought in to offer Jubilee support and information on how to strengthen it’s structures.

“Jubilee to be given 20 scholarships by the Communist Party of China” Kenyans.co.ke, 25 Jan 2018:

He [Wang Xiaohui, CPC Deputy Director of Policy and Research] stated that CPC would offer the scholarships annually for Jubilee Party to take its members to China to learn skills on grassroots mobilization, democracy, and party management.

Mr Wang added that the two political parties agreed to establish collaboration mechanisms.

“We are ready to deepen collaboration mechanisms with the Jubilee party just as we have done with the African National Congress of South Africa and the Chama cha Mapinduzi of Tanzania,” he affirmed.

And see my January 26, 2018 post, “Candy and Communists for Kenya: as Kenyatta’s Jubilee ‘deepens’ partnership with Communist Party of Kenya, Mars Wrigley East Africa to sell ‘affordable Skittles’“:

And yes that event at State House celebrating the deeping partnership of Jubilee and the Communist Party of China yesterday has turned heads. I think a lot of Americans had not been aware of this relationship. Obviously it makes sense in carrying forward the spirit of KANU of Kenyatta and Moi and their understudies. Kenya always labeled itself a “democracy” whether one party rule was formal or informal. China, of course, is also “democratic” with numerous parties other than the Communist Party.

At a micro level I would take umbrage at the blatant use of State resources for Jubilee Party business, but since the Party was launched at State House in the first place and the donors supporting “Western-style” democracy and the “rule of law” and such were not willing to say “boo”–nor the IEBC nor the Office of the Registrar of Political Parties–there is never a reason to be surprised at this point. We reap as we sow.

ICYMI: An important read from Tristan McConnell in The Atlantic: A Deadly Election Season in Kenya – The Killings Suggest a State that is More Predator than Protector. 

And here is the story from Moroccan World News of how the Chinese connected the African Unions computer servers at the Addis headquarters directly to Chinese servers in Shanghai.

On January 25, 2018, Professor Peter Kagwanja, by reputation a fierce ideologue of the ruling party, gave and then published interesting speech through the think tank he heads. (Kagwanja is married to Dr. Monica Juma, Permanent Secretary for Foreign Affairs at that time, and promoted to Cabinet Secretary just afterwards [and now C.S. for Defense].) Kagwanja is known for things like providing arguments justifying the 2017 pre-election deployment of the Kenya Defense Forces within Kenya itself without Parliamentary clearance as stipulated in the 2010 Constitution):

The Africa dream captured by the Africa Union (AU) agenda 2063 meets the Chinese dream in the Belt and Road Initiative, the main foreign policy of President Xi Jinping.Here in Kenya, the impact of Belt and Road Initiative is seen in the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project, developed to link the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean, from the port of Mombasa to Africa Atlantic sea board.It also resonates with the four pillars President Kenyatta has identified as part of his legacy which is food security, affordable housing, manufacturing and inexpensive healthcare.

The key lesson learnt in the 19th [CPC] congress, is the role of political stability in underpinning sustainable and long term development. Governments, come and go, but political parties should remain. The tragedy in Africa is that its political parties have a high mortality rate, making the Continent extremely unstable. Parties like the Communist PartyofChina(97Years),AfricaNationalCongress (ANC) of South A frica (106 years), Republican Party and Democratic Party (United States) respectively (164 years and 190 years) are the exception rather than the norm.

In Conclusion,

Africa needs strong parties, it needs to borrow a leaf from the Communist Party of China whose “democratic centralism”, has underpinned the world fastest economic growth in centuries.

Fifty years ago, Richard Nixon’s Presidential Daily Brief had a full page on the assassination of Kenya’s Tom Mboya

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Here is The President’s Daily Brief from the Central Intelligence Agency for Richard Nixon, July 7, 1969 as published in the CIA Freedom of Information Act on-line reading room.

More on Moi, KANU and Ruto meetings with Museveni

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The Nairobi Star reported this week (link via allafrica.com) that ex-president Moi and aides were in Kampala for three days of meetings with Museveni in the midst of his busy re-election schedule, and goes through some of the history between the two. Combined with the recent Ruto and KANU visits there appears to be a particular interest by Museveni in politicians from Kenya’s Rift Valley.
Why? Certainly Moi and his associate Biwott of KANU are extremely wealthy and control vast business assets in the region by virtue of Moi’s time as a KANU leader and especially as President–so in that sense any poltician might naturally seek them out–but there seems to be more to this. Something interesting to watch.