propaganda | AFRICOMMONS

As Kenya’s 2022 presidential race continues in lower public gear due to the global pandemic, today’s Daily Nation has a story headlined “Uhuru Cabinet sweep targets DP Ruto allies” which also reports on competing messaging from the opposing Kenyatta/Odinga/BBI and Ruto camps that has been apparent for at least a few months.

I noticed last year current activity on a Twitter account, “@TheRealRaila”, previously active for less than 30 days in 2017 associated with the very dark propaganda videos of the same title used on behalf of the UhuRuto re-election campaign in 2017:

Video gaining international attention https://t.co/9EZ5JLUC8D. Concerned Kenyan's trying to stop this from becoming reality @annekiguta pic.twitter.com/31sP37bTj5

— The Real Raila (@TheRealRaila) July 17, 2017

Raila represents corruption, violence & tribalism. Don't let Raila divide Kenya! Stop Raila, Save Kenya #ElectionsKE pic.twitter.com/0i2bcj9e4c

— The Real Raila (@TheRealRaila) August 4, 2017

Violent @railaodinga will lead #Kenya down a road of world exile and embarrassment. #DebatesKE #KE2017 pic.twitter.com/8wm0KiXD7z

— The Real Raila (@TheRealRaila) July 24, 2017

.@RailaOdinga has no proof for his attacks and accusation on the IEBC and the KDF #PresidentialDebateKE #kenyadecides #debatesKE

— The Real Raila (@TheRealRaila) July 24, 2017

no foreign leader will respect violent @RailaOdinga. Kenya will be exiled! #PresidentialDebateKE #kenyadecides #debatesKE

— The Real Raila (@TheRealRaila) July 24, 2017

.@RailaOdinga is breaking the law by keeping his own tally centre. #PresidentialDebateKE #debatesKE #kenyadecides

— The Real Raila (@TheRealRaila) July 24, 2017

.@RailaOdinga Opposition Tally Center = Violent Raila's Recipe For Violence. #PresidentialDebateKE #debatesKE #kenyadecides

— The Real Raila (@TheRealRaila) July 24, 2017

The account started Tweeting again back in June 2018 after silence from August 2017, and was now being used to promote the Building Bridges Initiative from the Uhuru-Raila “handshake” and “Uhuru’s Big 4 Agenda”. And to attack “evil society” for criticizing the Chinese Single Gauge Railroad deal, to attack Chief Justice David Maraga, and to attack Deputy President Ruto and his cadre.

For example, retweeting this:

This is how @williamsruto is fuelling infighting even in Mt. Kenya churches and then enjoying the spectacle.#RutoMasterOfDivision pic.twitter.com/2mHDr5beb7

— Jake Owiti (@OwitiJake) September 17, 2019

See this concluding discussion of the latest campaign posture from today’s Daily Nation piece that leads with talk of upcoming Cabinet and Parliamentary purges:

PROPAGANDA

The reports of the looming changes emerged as apocalyptic videos akin to those that ran against Mr Odinga in the 2017 campaign surfaced online, this time targeting the Number Two man.

The video that has all the hallmarks of the well-planned propaganda campaign that the former prime minister suffered in 2017, asks Kenyans to kick out dishonest leaders.

Images of the deputy president fill the video, although he is not mentioned.

On Sunday, Jubilee Deputy Secretary-General Caleb Kositany, who has become the de facto spokesman for the pro-Ruto camp, said his team was aware of the videos.

“We know who is producing them. It is a group of people supervised by a leading government official and their job description is to discredit William Ruto,” Mr Kositany, who is also the Soy MP, said.

The 2017 anti-Odinga videos and the divisive campaigns that started in 2013 but were escalated five years later were linked to British firm Cambridge Analytica and Harris Media, with the former said to have mined personal information from social media giant Facebook to craft and target personalised messages at voters.

“We just put information into the bloodstream of the internet and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again… like a remote control. It has to happen without anyone thinking, ‘that’s propaganda’, because the moment you think ‘that’s propaganda’, the next question is, ‘who’s put that out?’” Mr Alexander Nix from the firm said in the undercover video by Channel 4 TV.

The Ruto team On Sunday castigated the move by the government to reopen restaurants and not churches.

ANTI-VIRUS STRATEGY

Dr Ruto’s activities have stopped due to the directive to close churches. Mr Kositany said places of worship should open, and follow the Covid-19 guidelines.

“It’s not about DP stealing the show in churches, those in charge are more inclined to business, than Godliness,” Mr Kositany said.

Churches, he said, were the “last thing on their mind”. Senate Majority Leader Kipchumba Murkomen questioned the government’s move “to open bars and not churches”.

To the best of my knowledge and recollection, none of the various Election Observation Mission reports from Kenya for the March 2013 election covered the role of SCL Group of Britain (subsequent parent of Cambridge Analytica) for Uhuru Kenyatta. Nor were other foreign contractors for either side addressed to a substantial degree. [I will check back on this and add reference to anything I find.]

Likewise, I do not believe that Cambridge Analytica, SCL or Harris Media were examined in the 2017 Election Observation reporting. [I covered the final reports from the EUEOM here (January) and the Carter Center here (March).]

With new revelations coming — in addition to The Star reporting from pre-election 2017 I mentioned in my last post — I think this warrants follow-up. NDI and ELOG still have 2017 final reports outstanding so they are presumably well situated to cover this important part of the factual background the election competition in Kenya.

Given the apparent “slow roll” on the duty to investigate the Msando murder from July 2017, together with new questions now coming up about the 2012 death of Romanian Dan Muresan while working in Kenya for Cambridge Analytica on Kenyatta’s original campaign for the 2013 presidency, Election Observation Missions, and the democracy assistance establishment in general, have a lot of unfinished business.

The concerns are not new. See this from June 2017 at Snopes.com: “Privacy advocates concerned about Kenyan Governments hiring of Cambridge Analytica“.

For one of the best pieces assessing the questions faced is Nanjala Nyanbola’s “Politics in the Digital Age: Cambridge Analytica in Kenya” at AlJazeera English.

Another must read is Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas’ cover feature “How to Rig an Election” in The Spectator.

Asking for a friend.

Read the important report here: “Texas media company hired by Trump created Kenyan president’s viral ‘anonymous’ attack campaign against rival, new investigation reveals“.

I am a native Texan myself, so I do not think that Texans are less likely to understand the moral, spiritual or foreign relations repercussions of aggressive tribalist propaganda on behalf of William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta than Americans in Idaho or Arkansas, say. The problem is that the operation seems to have been conducted by a United States-based firm, staffed by Americans, orchestrating a digitized propaganda campaign directed against both Kenyan voters and those Americans such as myself and other amateur or professional “Kenya watchers” or U.S. government personnel who would conduct internet activity touching on Kenya politics and government.

The firm in question, Harris Media, based on this report but also their associated social media, seems to have affinity for what I think of as the “White Right”–the National Front, AfD, UKIP, Roy Moore, etc., aside from Trump. I have noted the Uhuruto government courting these folks in the United States over the years — I won’t elaborate here but it has always troubled me as an American Southerner. Some of these people also use Christian symbolism as part of their personal branding which is that much more troubling for me.

Unfortunately the Americans involved as of this writing have not filed a Foreign Agent Registration Act registration and made the associated disclosures to the Justice Department and the American public.

The Privacy International report appears to to reveal that the American firm was an “agent for a foreign principle” in conducting a propaganda campaign for Kenyatta and Ruto’s re-election, in substantial part through generating fear and loathing of the opposition. I do know that some of my friends in Washington wrongly predicted violent behavior on the part of the opposition in the context of the botched August 8 election. Could they have been influenced by this propaganda campaign, and/or by others that have not yet been uncovered by outside investigation?

I ordered this book through the University of Chicago at the African Studies Association meeting in Washington last month– newly published in the U.K. and released in 2015 in South Africa:

For fifty years the South African government spent an estimated $100 million annually on a campaign of disinformation, much of it in the US and UK.

New York Times journalist Ron Nixon provides a lively and shocking account of how power and influence were used to buy media coverage and create extensive support networks. These included an unlikely coalition of anti-communist black conservatives, religious organizations and global corporations.

With all the current buzz about Russian involvement in U.S. and European elections and political controversies, and since I knew some of the people who played a role in this story through my work in the Republican Party during the later years of Apartheid, I was naturally glad to see this and anxious to read through and see what new I learn about this fairly recent era in US and African politics and relations.

See my post Abramoff’s Africa and Obama’s America from 2012.

Update: I’ve finished it and highly recommend. Here is a review from The Daily Maverick. Of personal interest, some events took place in familiar locales in Mississippi, and Jack Abramoff gave an interview with the author in 2014 in which he claims, amazingly, that he didn’t know that the International Freedom Foundation which he helped found with South Africans in 1986 was a front for South African intelligence. (Jack was in relevant news this week sharply criticizing Senator Marco Rubio for his questioning of Trump Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson during confirmation hearings.)

AFRICOMMONS

Ken Flottman’s Blog on Democracy in Kenya, East Africa and the United States

Tag Archives: propaganda

Themes of 2022 Kenya presidential campaign reinforced as coronavirus crisis continues

Carter Center, NDI , EUEOM and other International Observers should follow up on Cambridge Analytica, other actors in Kenyan elections

Who has done the best writing so far about the fake NGOs and “bots” in the Kenyan election campaign?

Don’t Mess from Texas: disturbing Privacy International report indicates Uhuruto re-election campaign bought Texas-based negative propaganda campaign (updated)

A timely new read: “Selling Apartheid – South Africa’s Global Propaganda War”

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: