Politics
Borders versus People: Part III – Games within a Game
17 min read.In this final part of a three-part series, KALUNDI SERUMAGA explains why illegitimate power cannot rule legitimately, and remains permanently insecure in crisis or near failure. As a remedy, it seeks to clothe itself with the garments of legitimacy.
The peeping game
In 2017, some sharp-eyed IT managers at the African Union (AU) realized that bugging devices had been planted in the computer servers and conference rooms of the shiny new headquarters building. It was only inevitable that the Chinese were to be seen as prime suspects, given that it was them that had so kindly met the cost and physical labour of putting up the building.
In the ensuing debates, only then incoming AU chairperson, Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame, was unbothered.
“I don’t think spying is the specialty of the Chinese. We have spies all over the place in this world,” the chairman said. His only concern was that Africa had not got its act together. “We should have been able to build our own building.” but even then, he mused: “if you bring people to build for you, they may still spy on you.”
Such candour was refreshing, and brings another context about the mutual accusations of spying, subterfuge and intrigue being exchanged between the regimes of Rwanda and Uganda.
Mid-August regional media reports –to the extent that they can be relied upon, given the greatly partisan atmosphere- tell us that the mounting tension in the Uganda-Congo-Rwanda border region may have finally spilled over into open fighting, with Rwanda seeking to eliminate what it has been saying is an armed threat from a Uganda-backed rebel group based in the Democratic Republic of Congo (again), and led by former Kigali insiders.
A source close to the Kigali regime recently assured me that reports of the Rwanda Special Forces decimating a significant encampment of Rwandan National Congress (RNC) rebel forces are completely true, based on photographic evidence he claimed to have seen.
Since then: a frosty diplomatic process facilitated by the state of Angola, has sought to de-escalate tensions, by coaxing the presidents of the two countries into signing a 21st August Memorandum of Understanding. Its key points are: respecting mutual sovereignty; no acts of subversion in the territory of the other party, as well as third countries (read Congo); do nothing to create the impression of an interest in such destabilization, thereby eliminating all factors that may create such perception; and respecting the civic rights and freedoms of each other’s visiting citizens.
A source close to the Kigali regime recently assured me that reports of the Rwanda Special Forces decimating a significant encampment of Rwandan National Congress (RNC) rebel forces are completely true. His assertion is based on photographic evidence he claims to have seen.
The last clause is critical here. It clearly refers to the many Rwandan citizens that Kigali says are and have been held for long periods of time –some up to two years- by Uganda intelligence operatives, and subjected to inhuman treatment.
The Rwandan state, and its regional media allies point the finger squarely at Uganda’s historically notorious Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI).
The facts are that the CMI acquired this fearsome reputation well back in the early days of President Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army (NRA) 1986 ascension to power. Known then as the Directorate of Military Intelligence (as its Rwanda counterpart is now called), it was the grinding stone against which many a rebellion, coup attempt and even simple civilian political agitation was ground to dust by very brutally efficient methods of murder, torture, deception, intrusion, and intimidation.
This accusation comes weighed down with a most striking irony: in those early days, the Directorate’s deputy Director was one Paul Kagame, still incarnate as an officer of the NRA.
All this tells us quite a few things.
First, that the accusation that CMI is illegally apprehending and then torturing Rwandans is entirely credible, given its history, particularly of the early days of basically physically crushing the armed resistance that had spring up in northern Uganda. These episodes are not particularly well-known, as the global human rights NGO police, and rising Ugandan corporate feminist movement and the Western diplomatic community seemed to see many opportunities in the freshly-minted NRA regime, and chose to simply “not see”, what was going on. In addition, in the subsequent decade, many of the regime insiders in Uganda who were to become leading opposition voices after the falling out, also seem to have difficulty in making specific references to this foundational period of the regime. This could well be because they were in positions where they were much better informed than others back then, to now claim ignorance.
Read Also: Borders versus People – Part I: The Tribe Conundrum
This focus on Rwandans could even be considered an act of inclusivity, given that CMI stood accused of torturing everyone else in the days when it was heavily staffed by Rwandans of various citizenship.
Secondly, it is entirely possible, and in fact quite logical, that Rwanda’s government would seek to maintain an information-gathering network inside Uganda. Given President Kagame’s reaction to the AU scandal, it would be naïve to assume that he did not see a need to also build a Rwandan “back door” in the Ugandan intelligence outfit he helped to build. This, as the AU chairman pointed out in that context, is how the spying game works.
By the same token it would be entirely logical and natural to assume that if the Rwanda regime is in fact deploying its spies to Uganda that the Ugandan regime’s security apparatus would endeavor to seek out and apprehend any such person.
Naturally, it would also be quite logical that the human resource of any such network would comprise Rwanda nationals, Uganda nationals of Rwandan descent, and of course even other Ugandan nationals seeking pecuniary or other gain.
So, for any Rwandan national to now find themselves captive of a Ugandan organization designed in part by his or her president, this is a very ironical kind of homecoming indeed, as clearly, those institutional habits did not begin only after (now President) Paul Kagame left.
Thirdly, given the long public record established by President Museveni in reneging on agreements -and also President Kagame’s knowledge of this from his time as a high-level enforcer of Museveni’s will during his own time as a Uganda regime apparatchik- observers would be wise to see the Luanda MOU as the latest stage in a continuing feud, as opposed to the beginning of its end.
The intelligence, combat and diplomatic shenanigans are therefore neither a cause nor a solution to this game; they are merely details in a game still being played out. We need to look deeper.
The labelling game
Since the difference between Ugandan and Rwandans –from throne to commoner- have never really been as real as the current Kigali-Kampala standoff have made it, there can be perhaps no greater illustration of the appearance of Birds fighting their reflection in a window pane. If anything, the dispute is a critical example of how similar the two political cultures –old and new- are.
The concept of Rwandan immigration to “Uganda” is a rather fluid one. Rwanda existed long before Uganda ever did, and before either colony was created. In some sense, anyone in south western Uganda could be considered Rwandan just as anyone in certainly northern Rwanda could be considered “Ugandan”.
And Rwandan indigenous communities are organized along lines followed also by communities in south and south-western Uganda, not to mention Burundi, right down to often having the same clans. There are families -some now quite prominent- in what is now south-western Uganda, whose ancestry can be traced to migration from Rwanda as far back as the 16th Century.
Perhaps we should therefore see the colonial project, and this neo-colonial one now being held together by these bickering presidents, as an interruption and distortion to those historical relations.
The concept of Rwandan immigration to Uganda is a rather fluid one. Rwanda existed long before Uganda ever did, and before either colony was created. In some sense, anyone in south-western Uganda could be considered Rwandan just as anyone in northern Rwanda could be considered Ugandan.
Subsequent to colonization, there were groups of people who migrated to Uganda, who were now being called Rwandan. The first known such group was a group of embattled aristocrats from the Rwandan royal court, who had to leave following an internal political upheaval. The eventually settled in Namutamba, mid-western Buganda.
There followed a few waves of economic migration, due to the growth of Uganda’s colonial economy. It should be noted that it was the district authorities in Western Uganda that first passed laws restricting migration from Rwanda, followed eventually by the colonial government as a whole.
The migrations culminated in the almost exclusively Tutsi influx that followed the 1959 Hutu “revolution” mentioned in part II.
Many prominent Ugandans can be traced to all these developments.
The actor-playwright Deborah Asiimwe, proprietor of the Kampala International Theatre Festival once told me of her grandmother whose speaks very fluent Luganda as a result of having lived in the Buganda royal court in the 1930s, where she had been expected to become a wife to then Kabaka Daudi Cwa, whose reign ended in 1939.
The late Dede Majoro (d. 1995), perhaps the most gifted guitarist this region has ever seen, also lived for a while in Buganda royal court in the reign of Kabaka Edward Muteesa (1939-1966), along with many of his siblings. Kabaka Muteesa provided them sanctuary after their father Silas Majoro (and former schoolmate at Buddo), a senior advisor to the deposed Rwandan King Kigeli (1936-2016), who had been assassinated by Belgian agents in their process of actively supporting the Hutu “revolution”. Dede’s sister, Grace Kaboyo was until recently one of President Museveni’s district commissioners.
Mr Robert Kalumba is a very visible public relations officer at Kampala City Council Authority, whose grandfather was granted a tidy parcel of land in Buganda by the sister of Edward Muteesa.
Another member of the Rwanda royal family who also fled to Uganda and married a Ugandan woman. They were to have a son who went on to marry one of Edward Muteesa’s daughters. He went on to become a very senior immigration officer. I went to school with him.
They were to have a son who went on to marry one of Edward Muteesa’s daughters. I went to school with him.
The deposed King Kigeli himself took refuge in Uganda for a while. As a child, I recall our mother pointing out to us his very tall frame walking along the street, as she drove us passed the apartment block he lived in, near the city centre.
In short, the problem has never been the presence of Rwandans in Uganda as such, since there have always been Rwandans in Uganda even before Uganda became Uganda (and then took parts of what was independent north Rwanda with it). The problem is the political culture that comes with that presence, given the historical record that continues to show that the biggest single persecutors and killers of Rwandans have always been other Rwandans.
In his play A Time of Fire Uganda writer Charles Mulekwa reflects on the common failing of political peoples fleeing war and persecution of actually bringing the causes of the war with them. It is a case of a refugee and migrant community that has “learned nothing, and forgotten nothing”, as was said of the early 1800s French Bourbon dynasty exile who, having taken back power in France, then proceeded to replicate all the political mistakes that had caused them to lose power in the first place.
It is a challenge of political culture of Rwanda. Of the stubbornness of old habits, which, as is said, die hard.
But where did it start?
The imposter game
In the biblical tale of Naboth’s vineyard, an unwitting King finds himself in possession of a vineyard he has coveted for a long time. It belonged to his neighbour Naboth, who had declined to sell it, as it was part of his own inheritance from his father, and according to Jewish custom could not be disposed of in such a way.
Wife Jezebel had her own plan to cheer up the frustrated monarch. She had Naboth framed, murdered, and his property seized. The King learns of this only when confronted by the Judges of his Kingdom. For them the real sacrilege is that beyond the murder, the perpetrator then assumes the place of the victim, in the form of claiming to be the rightful owner of his inheritance. This is the true meaning of the verse: “Have you killed and also taken possession?” (Kings 21:19), now colloquially known as the syndrome of “Naboth’s vineyard”.
In his play A Time of Fire, the Ugandan writer Charles Mulekwa reflects on the common failing of political peoples fleeing war and persecution to actually bring the causes of the war with them. It is a case of a refugee and migrant community that has “learned nothing, and forgotten nothing”…
In the biblical story, the King repents and atones. In the real world of African politics, many a murderous usurper has simply soldiered on regardless, with this disastrous game.
But now, the moment of truth is fast arriving, and we are all about to be found out.
With Uganda, the fraudulent nature of the three-decade-old government is better known and a lot more explicit.
In the case of Rwanda, we must begin with a similar usurpation, by one Kanjogera, dowager in the Royal House of Rwanda in 1896, who conspires with the encroaching Germans to have the then monarch murdered in favour of Musinga her own biological son. This is an event replete with the kinds of abominations that shocked the judges in Naboth’s case.
One Muhumuza, mother of the murdered monarch led the initial resistance to this usurpation.
Despite it having been seen as a movement among very ordinary people, Muhumuza became an adherent of the Nyabinghi movement.
Nyabinghi was the sovereign of the 16th Century kingdom of Karagwe, which name now lives on as a district in northern Tanzania.
She was murdered by her husband Ruhinda, king of the Mpororo just to the north, in his attempt to take over her throne.
Her spirit was to haunt him and his accomplices for years afterwards, and became the foundation of a “cult”, that passed it down the generations through initiating young women into its priesthood. The Nyabinghi belief-system soon spread to neighbouring regions, and was taken up by persons nursing deep grievances against existing authority, making it a target for state repression.
This became a particularly acute problem in pre-colonised Rwanda -which included what is now parts of south-western Uganda- where the various Kings had tried to stamp it out.
She can be said to be the African patron saint of the betrayed.
Naturally enough, the anti-colonial sentiments in Rwanda, sparked by Kanjogera’s allegedly German-backed coup, found a home among the Nyabinghi movement.
Having been inducted into the Nyabinghi priesthood, Muhumuza became the incarnation of the spirit of the long-dead queen. This set the stage for the showdown that sucked in the German, British and later Belgian colonial authorities.
“These fanatical women are a curse to the country.” One colonial official reportedly complained.
This was nothing unusual, except for the times it was dealing with. It is something of a tradition here to literally channel a long-passed on leader’s spirit when faced with an extreme leadership challenge.
During the 1953-1955 British exiling of Kabaka Muteesa, a man called Kiganira declared himself the reincarnation of Kibuuka, Buganda’s Achilles-like war-spirit, and began agitations that led to his arrest and execution.
The spirt of a long-dead Shona monarch Nehanda, also inspired the initial resistance to the British colonizing mission. It has been handed down to possess generations of women in particular family lines. At the time of the colonizing invasions, it was held by Charwe Nyakasikana, whose invocation of it was instrumental in the initial anti-colonial resistance, until she and her companion were captured by the British and hanged in 1898.
The colony of Rwanda comes into existence and is later inherited by Belgium. In that success, these imposed imposter states show that illegitimacy can be made to work. Kogonjera’s usurpation becomes an understanding of politics, and produces a form of white Pan-Africanism:
Muhumuza is captured by the colonisers and exiled to be held captive in colonial Kampala, until her passing in 1944.
The history game
The past matters. And this is why those in the present always seek to control it.
With the rise of later African nationalism, old tales of the initial German conquest, as well as current experiences of the apartheid system were mined to design a toxic mix of hate, and racist anthropology history which become an official mantra of PARMEHUTU, a party led by one Gregoire Kayibanda; a man until recently the private secretary to the Belgian head of the Roman Catholic Church in Rwanda. This Hate History lays the foundation of the Hutu “revolution” of 1959, that created the mass exodus of Tutsi into neighboring countries. Kayibanda becomes president, and Hate History remained taught.
His victory is cut short when his army chief of staff Juvenal Habyarimana, overthrows him and then allegedly has him and his wife starved to death while in detention (thus taking possession and then killing, in his case).
Similar betrayals dogged the rebellion organized from exile against this new set of imposters, and vicious, internecine conflict seemed to have characterized its journey all the way to victory over the Habyarimana regime.
With the rise of later African nationalism, old tales of the initial German conquest, as well as recent experiences of the apartheid system, were mined to design a toxic mix of hate, and racist anthropology-history, which become an official mantra of PARMEHUTU, a party led by one Gregoire Kayibanda, a man until recently the private secretary to the Belgian head of the Roman Catholic Church in Rwanda.
Historically, the monarchy had seemed to be the focal point around which all Rwandans within its ambit organised their various identities. There seemed to have been a push within the rebellion to put the monarchy question back on the table.
The standing accusation, best documented by the writer Timothy Kalyegira, is that those now in power in Kigali, first hijacked the initial rebellion, and the formation of RPF was in itself a usurpation of an earlier initiative organised by Rwandan exiles not embedded in the Uganda state, against the Rwandan Habyarimana regime that the current leadership of the RPF suppressed using their then high positions within the Ugandan NRA security apparatus. This initial initiative may have been known as inkotanyi.
This can be framed as a continuation of Kanjogera’s coup: usurpation upon usurpation, and a legacy of illegitimate political inheritances.
The most prominent example of this of course would be the assassination of (former NRA bush war veteran, and Uganda government deputy minister of Defence) Col. Fred Rwigyema who, as first field commander of the RPF invasion, suffered the ignominy of being shot dead within 24 hours of crossing into his country.
Illegitimate power cannot rule legitimately, and remains permanently insecure, in crisis or near failure.
It is often aware of this, and as a remedy, seeks to clothe itself with the garments of legitimacy. Kanjogera commits regicide, but then seeks refuge in a “neo-traditionalist” gambit of continuing the same monarchy in the form of her son, so as to hide behind the legitimacy of a throne, despite having just desecrated it.
And given the chance, imperial power will always seek to enter a society, and tilt the balance of power away from the most legitimate in favour of the least legitimate, which must then depend on it to one extent or another. This remains the story of Africa’s domination.
Nearly every historic victory of rebel organisations on our continent holds a record of being tempted by Western powers to reach for absolute power, where a peace-making coalition may have worked more in the mass interest instead.
Read Also: Borders versus People – Part II: Congo – A Classic African Tragedy
In Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi’s minority Tigrayan People’s’ Liberation Front was able to militarily dominate the broader anti-Mengistu resistance, and subsequent regime, through the significant logistical resources delivered to it under the cover of Western famine relief, once the West realized that Mengistu’s days were numbered.
Museveni’s NRA dragged out the Nairobi 1985 Nairobi Peace TalkS for months on end while using material support channeled by the West through the notorious LONRHO corporation to increase the size of the army nearly ten-fold, before storming the capital.
All Africans are advised: look again at your resident liberators; how exactly did they come to power?
This is essentially a crisis of legitimacy. For both sides. Illegitimate power cannot rule legitimately, and remains permanently insecure, in crisis and in need of self-validation.
It is often aware of this, and as a remedy, seeks to clothe itself with the garments of legitimacy. Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army brought an exceptional level of illegitimacy to our politics in the way it seized power in 1986, through series of opportunistic exploitation of every old and current political grievance it could harness, and has held on to it. As mentioned in part II, it came carrying the seeds of the Rwanda Patriotic Front in its womb.
The 1993 wholesale invasion of Rwanda by the RPF was therefore –amongst other things- the exportation of that habit of illegitimacy to another country. As said, this was to be the fate of the DRC, even later.
The strategic resources game
This long and twisted story continues. It will create new approaches to known facts, and then bring unknown facts into creation.
I insist that this remains a struggle to be the principal conduit -broker, even- through which to channel the latest generation of strategic minerals, to Western corporations.
This is not just an African story. In the history of the conflicts of the modern world, certain zones stand out as having suffered from the accident of being located where strategic resources were to be found. Before the DRC, there was Western Europe and the Middle East.
Underneath the usual romanticisation of European conflict lies the story of coal and iron. Until perhaps the 1960s, the Alsace-Lorraine region, which lies where the lands of France and Germany meet, held the largest known deposits of iron ore in the world. Together with the abundant supplies of the coal in the neighbouring regions, this created the opportunity for the bulk production of perhaps the most significant material to the emergent industrial revolution: steel.
Three significant wars linked to this region have been fought in Western Europe: the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871 which ended with a German occupation; the 1914-1918 British-German war in France; and the 1939-1945 British-French-American-Russian war against Germany and Japan that left much of the continent and beyond devastated.
This is not just an African story. In the history of the conflicts of the modern world, certain zones stand out as having suffered from the accident of being located where strategic resources were to be found. Before the DRC, there was Western Europe and the Middle East.
This recurrent conflict was only suspended for the last eighty years with the creation of a trade mechanism that enabled countries from all parts of the continent to access those and later other resources for their domestic industries, without having to also physically control the territory.
This mechanism was named the European Coal and Steel Commission, which became the European Economic Commission, which became the European Commission, and which is now known today as the European Union. Its core function is to prevent the buildup of the economic pressures that lead to war.
From the 1890s, the military forces of Western Europe and increasingly, the United States and underwent an extensive debate regarding the relative advantages of continuing to rely on steam-powered engines fueled by the burning of coal, over the emergent liquid fuels. By 1912, the liquid fuels camp had won the debate: oil was easier to excavate, transport, store and deliver. It was scalable, yielded more energy per unit, and did not require the maintenance of a global network of “coaling stations” dependent of a small fleet of labour-intensive “coaling ships” supplying their navies.
It did however, require the establishment of a guaranteed supply. This is how the entire middle east, with its vast, accessible oilfields, increasingly became the focus of rival empires seeking to gain a foothold on this strategic reserve.
The British navy, for example, decided to strategically switch from coal in the period just before the 1914-1918 war.
The subsequent dismantling of the Turkish Ottoman empire, leading to the carve up of its Arab dominions into the unstable oil-producing region known today, is one visible result.
Then came the dawn of nuclear energy, particularly its use in warfare, heralded by the 1945 American destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Atomic weapons were being developed by all sides during that war. They came as the logical outcome of the war’s increasing dependence on widespread destruction of cities and the civilian hinterland as a way of hampering the physical capacity of the enemy to maintain war. An atomic bomb offered the opportunity to impose strategic paralysis on an enemy through wiping out an entire city with one devastating operation.
A person no less than Albert Einstein, a refugee from Hitler’s Germany, as well as pioneer of nuclear science was among the voices that advised the then US President to ensure it got and stayed ahead in the coming nuclear arms race, by developing the first bomb before Germany, or anyone else did. For this, they advised, the US was going to need a reliable supply of good quality Uranium.
“The United States has only very poor ores of uranium in moderate quantities” they warned in a 1939 letter: “There is some good ore in Canada and the former Czechoslovakia, while the most important source of uranium is Belgian Congo.”
This is where the fate of what we now know as the DRC was sealed. In retrospect, it was clear that Patrice Lumumba barely stood a chance. As early as 1947, the newly formed US Central Intelligence Agency had already dispatched agents to establish the viability of Uranium supply from Congo, and how to work with Belgian mining corporations there, to secure it. A truly independent Congo was seen as a threat to that objective, with US president Eisenhower even developing something of a personal obsession with Lumumba,
“The Shinkolobwe stockpile was about 200 times purer than average uranium sources at the time.” Notes Kenyan journalist Parselelo Kantai, who has researched this subject extensively.
What followed is not just known history, but a continuing story.
Western capitalism still holds a vision for the future: a fully automated world, in which goods and services are made, sorted and delivered by unmanned machinery, and paid for electronically.
This means an administrative layer of control and co-ordination. The vision therefore, is for a fully wired world, centralized around digital, online control, tracking everything from production levels, to individual consumer preferences.
This is the essence of the 5G “fourth industrial revolution”: digital technology stepping up to a level of broad-span interconnectivity primed to a speed and versatility previously unseen.
We are encouraged to think of a “cloud”, but this whole information infrastructure is not ephemeral. It requires physical warehousing and relies therefore on earth-bound space and technologies: wires, server farms hosting acres of capacity, routing stations, transmitters, communication devices and the like.
Three materials among many, are absolutely critical to all of this: copper, coltan and fiberglass. Of the three, Coltan is the most highly valuable. It makes the heat-resistant circuity in all devices. Its global trade expected only to expand exponentially as the 5G revolution takes root.
And once again, the unfortunate Democratic Republic of Congo finds itself as the primary future source for all this bounty. DRC may hold the single largest known reserves (estimated by some to be up 60% of the global supply) of the mineral.
My point is simple: once a strategic resource of the future has been identified, then the region that has them is in for decades, if not centuries of war and destabilization. Control the DRC (or at least part of it), and you control the oils and uraniums of the future. Welcome back to the new Alsace-Lorraine or middle east. Or the old Congo.
As I said in part II of this series, no place deserves a break from this relentless plunder as does the DRC.
Key government figures in Uganda and Rwanda have long been accused of orchestrating this plunder. First directly, during their respective armies’ invasions and occupation there, and then late indirectly, through the proxy militias they propped up and left behind.
Three materials, among many, are absolutely critical to all of this: copper, coltan and fibreglass. Of the three, coltan is the most valuable; it is used to make heat-resistant circuits in all digital devices. Its global trade is expected to expand exponentially as the 5G revolution takes root.
Despite furious denials, these accusations have been given substance by both the United Nations, as well as a whole host of campaigning organisations. And the fact remains that hundreds of thousands of Congolese, including children, are now living and dying as exploited artisanal miners of the ore of these and other precious minerals.
But once dug up and loaded, this valuable cargo has to go somewhere. Who talks to whom? Who gets to be the middleman? Whose borders will have to be crossed -or closed- to settle those questions?
The answer lies in the answers to those questions.
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Politics
Only Connect: Human Beings Must Connect to Survive
We must fight to remain human, to make connections across borders, race, religion, class, gender, and all the false divisions that exist in our world. We must show solidarity with one another, and believe we can construct another kind of world.
24 November 2021. We wake to the news that 27 migrants have drowned in the English Channel.
“Stop the boats!” cry the Tories. It’s the hill British Prime Minister Sunak has chosen to die on. But there is no political will to stop the wider crisis of global migration, driven by conflict, poverty, persecution, repressive regimes, famine, climate change, and the rest. Moreover, there is zero understanding that the West is behind many of the reasons why people flee their homes in the first place. Take Afghanistan, a useless Allied war that went nowhere. It left the Taliban more powerful than ever. Afghans who worked for the British army, betrayed when our forces pulled out. Now they make up the majority of cross-Channel migrants.
Not for them the welcome we gave Ukrainians. Wrong skin colour, maybe? Wrong religion? Surely not.
Some right-wingers rejoice at news of these deaths. “Drown ’em all!” they cry on social media. “Bomb the dinghies!” There are invariably photos of cute cats and dogs in their profiles. Have you noticed how much racists and fascists love pets? Lots of ex-servicemen among them, who fail to see the link between the failed wars they fought, and the migration crisis these spawned. The normalisation of a false reality is plain to see. Politicians and the media tell folk that black is white, often in meaningless three-word slogans, and the masses believe it. Migrants, especially those who arrive in small boats, are routinely labelled criminals, murderers, rapists, invaders, Muslims intent on imposing Islam on the UK, and “young men of fighting age”, which implies that they are a standing army.
If you bother to look beyond the stereotypes, the reality is very different.
One couple’s story
Riding those same waves, a year or so later, are two Iranian Kurds. A young couple. Let’s call them Majid and Sayran. They have sadly decided not to have children, in 12 years of marriage, because they believe Iran is no place to bring up children. Activists who oppose the regime, they were forced to flee after receiving direct threats. They ran an environmental NGO, and held Kurdish cultural events that are banned in Iran.
The husband, Majid, a writer, first fled to Iraq in 2021. He and his wife were parted for 18 months. She eventually joined him in a Kurdish area of Iraq. They were forced to flee again, when the Iranian regime bombed the homes and offices of political dissidents in Iraq, killing and wounding many of their friends. They decided their only hope was to head for Britain via Turkey, Italy and France. They paid people smugglers around USD30,000 in total. They eventually ended up in a hotel in my home town. Their story continues below.
Feeling powerless
Meanwhile, there I am sitting at home in the UK, getting more and more enraged about my government’s attitude and policies on immigration. I feel powerless. I think about refugees living in an asylum hotel in my town. I’m told many of them are Muslim, now trying to celebrate Ramadan. I picture them breaking their fasts on hotel food, which relies heavily on chips and other cheap junk. I meet some of them in the queue at the town’s so-called community fridge, where I used to volunteer. I chat a little to Majid, who can speak some English. I try to find out why they are there. The “fridge” gives out food donated by supermarkets to anyone in need. The food would otherwise be thrown away because it’s about to reach its sell-by date. The refugees go there, they tell me, to get fresh stuff because the hotel food is so awful. I can sense the growing resentment from locals in the queue, who want to put “Britain first”.
Thinking, thinking. Then I berate myself. I should take action, however small. Get down to the supermarket, buy food for, say, six families. I can’t feed everyone, but let’s start somewhere. Food that people from the Middle East (the majority of the hotel residents) will like. Hummus, flatbreads, dates, olives, nuts, rice. Divide it into six bags. I don’t know how I will be received (I feel rather nervous), but let’s give it a go.
I can sense the growing resentment from locals in the queue, who want to put “Britain first”.
The hotel manager is cagey. (I am later banned. He and his female head of security are rude and hostile, but that’s still to come.) For now, he lets me in to distribute the food. Luckily, I spot Majid, just the person I’m looking for. I recognise him from the “fridge” queue. He can translate for the others, who quickly gather in the lobby. The food is snatched within minutes, people are delighted with it. (It turns out Majid and his wife are atheists. But they get some food too.)
I didn’t do this for the thanks. But I’m glad I made that first move. Taking it further, I invite them both round for a meal. I spend hours making Persian rice, it’s a big hit. My new friends fall on the spread like ravening wolves. One thing leads to another. We start to meet regularly. It helps that they have some English, which greatly improves as the weeks pass and they go to classes. They are thrilled by everyday things – walks in the country, pizza, a local fair, being taken to see the film Oppenheimer. (“We were amazed to see so many British people go to the movies!”) They tell me they are delighted simply to make contact, to see how ordinary people live, to be invited into my, and my friends’ homes. I tell them I have plenty to learn from them, too. We get a bit tearful. I say hi to Sayran’s mum on the phone in Iran. We also laugh a lot. Majid has a black sense of humour.
At first, I don’t ask about their experience of crossing the Channel. All I know is that the entire journey, from Iran to Britain, was deeply traumatic. Until now, months later, when I ask Majid to describe what happened.
Majid picks up the story of their journey in Turkey: “The most bitter memories of my life were witnessing my wife’s tiredness, fear and anxiety as we walked for nine hours to reach Istanbul. I saw my wife cry from exhaustion and fear many times, and I myself cried inside. In a foreign country without a passport, our only hope was luck, and our only way was to accept hardship because we had no way back. The most bitter thing in this or any refugee journey is that no one gives any help or support to his fellow traveller. The smallest issue turns into a big tension.”
To reach the sea, where they would take a boat to Italy, they walked through dense pine forests. “There were about 30 of us in this group and none of us knew each other. We passed through the forest with extreme anxiety and fear of being arrested by the ruthless Turkish police. We were all afraid that some babies who were tied tightly on their father’s shoulders would cry and the police would find us. But as soon as we stepped into the forest, all the children became silent due to their instinct and sense of danger. They didn’t make a single sound all the way. We were in the forest for about 12 hours, and reached the beach by 8 a.m. Here we were joined by several other groups of refugees; by now we were more than 100 people.”
The week-long journey to Italy in a 12-meter “pleasure” boat carrying 55 people was terrifying. “As the boat moved towards the deep parts of the sea, fear and anxiety took over everyone. The fear of the endless sea, and worse, the fear of being caught by Turkish patrols, weighed heavily on everyone’s mind. The boat moved at the highest speed at night, and this speed added to the intensity of the waves hitting the hull of the boat. Waves, waves, waves have always been a part of the pulse of travellers. As the big waves moved the boat up and down, the sound of screams and shouts would merge with the Arabic words of prayers of old, religious passengers. I can say that there is no scene in hell more horrific than this journey. It was near sunset when several passengers shouted: ‘Land! Land!’”
On the way to France, they somehow lost their backpacks. All their possessions gone. Moving fast forward, they found themselves in yet another forest, this time close to the French coast.
“For the first time, I felt that the whole idea I had about Europe and especially the French was a lie. Nowhere in the underdeveloped and insecure countries of the Middle East would a couple be driven to the wrong address at night, in the cold, without proper clothing. But what can be done when you illegally enter a country whose language you do not know? It was almost 2 o’clock in the morning. The sound of the wind and the trees reminded us of horror scenes in the movies. It was hard to believe that we were so helpless in a European country on that dark, cold and rainy night.” He collected grass and tree leaves to make a “warm and soft nest. I felt like we were two migratory birds that had just arrived in this forest.” Eventually they found what they were looking for – a refugee camp. The next step was to try and cross the Channel.
“I can say that there is no scene in hell more horrific than this journey.”
“We reached the beach. The sky was overcast and it was almost sunset. A strange fear and deadly apprehension gripped all the poor refugees in that space between the sky, the earth and the sea.” A smugglers’ car brought a dinghy and dumped it on the beach before quickly driving away. It was no better than a rubber tube. The refugees filled it with air, and attached a small engine. “They stuck 55 people in that tube.” The dinghy went round in circles and ended up on another part of the French coast. Many people decided to disembark at this point, leaving 18 passengers.
“Women and children were wailing and crying. The children looked at the sea dumbfounded. Men argued with each other and sometimes arguments turned into fights. The boat was not balanced. I was writhing in pain from headaches, while my wife’s face was yellow and pale because of the torment.”
At last a ship approached, shining bright floodlights at the dinghy. It belonged to the British coast guard. “When they threw the life rope towards our plastic boat, we were relieved that we were saved from death.”
Hotel life
My friends tell me about conditions at the hotel. Grim. Food that is often inedible, especially for vegetarians like them. They send me photos of soya chunks and chips. Residents are banned from cooking in their rooms, or even having a fridge. Majid and Sayran have sneaked in a rice steamer and something to fry eggs on. (They have to hide them when the cleaners come round.) Kids have no toys and nowhere to play except in the narrow corridors. Everyone is depressed and bored, waiting for months, sometimes years, to hear the result of their asylum claims.
Majid takes up the story: “Due to the lack of toys and entertainment, the boys gather around the security guards and help them in doing many small tasks. The image of refugee children going to school on cold and rainy mornings is the most painful image of refugees in this developed country. In schools, language problems make refugee children isolated and depressed in the first few years. What can be the situation of a pregnant woman, or a woman whose baby has just been born, with an unemployed husband, and poor nutrition, in a very small room in this hotel? Imagine yourself. Many elderly people here suffer from illnesses such as rheumatism, knee swelling, and high blood sugar. But many times when they ask for a change in the food situation or request to transfer somewhere else, they are ridiculed by the hotel staff. One day, a widow who had no food left for her and was given frozen food, went to the hotel management office with her daughter to protest. But one of the security guards took the food container from this woman’s hand and threw it on the office floor in front of her child. Now that little girl is afraid and hates all the security.”
“When they threw the life rope towards our plastic boat, we were relieved that we were saved from death.”
Yet racists rant about migrants living it up in five-star hotels costing the taxpayer £8 million a day. They don’t think or care about how we got here: the Tories let the asylum backlog soar, by failing to process asylum claims in a timely fashion. Some of us cynically wonder if this was deliberate. The number of people awaiting an initial decision is now 165,411. This compares to 27,048 asylum applications, including dependents, between January and September 2015, before the UK left the European Union.
I’ve done what I can. Lobbied the Home office to improve the food and conditions. I eventually got a reply, both from them and the catering contractor. Wrote to my MP, local councillors, inter-agency bodies that monitor conditions in hotels, migrant organisations, the press. We have had some success. There is a lot more to do.
I ask my friends if the threat of being deported to Rwanda (a key plank of the UK’s asylum policy) might have deterred them from coming. Or if anything would have stopped them. Majid replies: “Not at all! Because everywhere in this world is better than Iran for life. Especially for me, I have a deep problem with the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. They threatened me with death over the phone.”
Making sense of the world
World news has become unbearable to read, watch or listen to. Once a news junkie, I increasingly find myself switching off. I’m equally appalled by the widespread apathy, even among friends who were once politically engaged. Then there is all the dog whistling our government does, in language that echoes that of the far right. Ministers and MPs have shamelessly whipped up suspicion, hatred, and fear of the Other. “Cruella” Braverman was one of the worst offenders, but at least she is no longer Home Secretary. Her “dream” of deporting refugees to Rwanda (her words) has become a nightmare for Sunak. Both are of East African Asian heritage.
Ministers and MPs have shamelessly whipped up suspicion, hatred, and fear of the Other.
This may sound trite, but we must struggle to remain human, and make connections where we can – across borders, race, religion, class, gender, all the false divisions that exist in our world. We have to keep lobbying those in power, and going on protest marches. We must show solidarity with one another. We have to believe we can construct another kind of world, pole pole, from the bottom up. A kinder world would help, for starters. It can begin in very small ways.
Politics
Solidarity Means More Than Words
Although the South African government is one of the most vocal supporters of the Palestinian cause, its actions tell a different story.
On October 15 South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, decked in a black and white keffiyeh, pledged his solidarity with the people of Palestine. He was surrounded by colleagues in the same attire holding Palestine flags. This was a week after Israel began its bombardment of the Gaza strip. The situation in Gaza is an even worse nightmare than usual, with the death toll from Israeli strikes now exceeding 11,000 civilians, half of whom are children. Much of the open-air prison housing more than two million people has been reduced to rubble. South Africa’s already critical rhetoric on Israel has become significantly harsher, but the question being asked is, when will this translate into action?
Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has stood unfailingly with Palestine, beginning with the close friendship and camaraderie between former president Nelson Mandela and Yasser Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) at the time of Mandela’s release from prison in 1990. South Africa was one of the first countries to refer to Israel as an apartheid state, a progressive stance at the state level, even in Africa.
Yet the current government’s bravery, even in diplomacy, is questionable. The pro-Palestine public and civil society are demanding answers to basic questions, such as why Israeli citizens can travel to South Africa visa-free, while Palestinians cannot. And although South Africa recalled its ambassador to Israel in 2018, downgrading the embassy to a liaison office, it has yet to take the step to expel the Israeli ambassador to South Africa.
But things are shifting. Israel has acted with such violence that South Africa’s language has grown stronger to the point that the Cabinet called Israel’s bombardment of Gaza not just a genocide but a “holocaust on the Palestinians.” After a month of civil society and public pressure on the government to expel Eliav Belotsercovsky, Israel’s Ambassador to South Africa, Ramaphosa recalled South African diplomats in Tel Aviv for “consultations,” and Naledi Pandor, the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, has called for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to arrest and try Netanyahu and his Cabinet for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Notwithstanding these diplomatic maneuvers, the expulsion of Belotserkovsky is still in discussion at the parliamentary level, and in practice, the relationship between Israel and South Africa is in contradiction. South Africa is Israel’s biggest trade partner on the African continent. In 2021, South Africa exported $225 million worth of goods to Israel, mostly in the form of capital goods (tangible assets or resources used in the production of consumer goods), machinery and electrical products, and chemicals; it paid $60 million for imports, mostly intermediate goods (goods used to finalize partially finished consumer goods), and food products by far, making a total in trade of $285 million. This is one-third of Israel’s total trade with sub-Saharan Africa of $760 million.
In 2012, the government announced that products made in the West Bank need to be labeled as originating in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as opposed to a “Product of Israel,” which led to an outcry from Zionist groups and the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, calling the move discriminatory and divisive. But several Checkers and Spar branches still stock items labeled “Product of Israel,” with no repercussions.
Zionist entities have for decades been openly committing crimes under South African law. South African nationals have traveled to Israel to fight in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), and some are there currently. This is illegal under the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act which is very clear about citizens fighting under other flags. A South African citizen may not provide military assistance to a foreign army unless they have made an application to the Minister of Defence and received their approval. When the issue was raised at a recent parliamentary hearing, Minister in the Presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, admitted that the State Security Agency is aware of this phenomenon, and would provide the identities of these soldiers to the National Prosecuting Authority, as they are a threat to the State. Yet the fact that South Africans have been fighting in the Israeli army is no secret. Recently, a video emerged of a soldier leading other soldiers in South Africa’s national anthem. Another question being asked yet again is, why has it taken this long for any prosecutions to take place or even be suggested?
In July a group of Israeli water experts and state officials visited South Africa to pitch their technology to the South African government, a trip organized by the Jewish National Fund of South Africa and the South African Zionist Federation. The Jewish National Fund is notorious for planting forests on former Palestinian villages demolished by the Israeli army. Israel and South Africa are also connected in the agriculture sphere and South Africa is not alone in this. Israel had been using agriculture and military training to carve an increasingly wider economic path to make its way through Africa, and in 2021 Israel nearly obtained observer status at the African Union, a proposal suspended by South Africa and Algeria’s protests.
The Paramount Group, an arms manufacturer with offices and factories in Cape Town and Johannesburg, is strongly connected to the Israeli army, providing armored vehicles to Haifa-based Elbit Systems, who in turn supplies Israel with 85% of its land-based and drone equipment. The founder, Ivor Ichikowitz, is an outspoken Zionist whose family foundation has been known to raise funds to support the IDF and Paramount’s Vice President for Europe, Shane Cohen, was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli Army. Ichikowitz has been allied with prominent South African politicians for many years. In 2009 the Mail and Guardian reported that Ichikowitz had flown Jacob Zuma to Lebanon and Kazakhstan for free on his personal jet. He was also, bizarrely, a broker in a peace mission by African heads of state, including Ramaphosa, to Ukraine in June this year. By allowing for these sales to Elbit, South Africa is violating its own commitment to the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty of 2014, which, as a signatory, has agreed to cease the provision of weaponry when there is a reasonable expectation that such arms might be employed in severe breaches of international human rights or humanitarian law.
The South African government has been quietly allowing its own laws to be flouted by Israeli and Zionist interests. But pressure is mounting on the government’s need to convert its narrative into action. Minister Pandor has called for an immediate imposition of an arms embargo on Israel. Does this mean the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) will prohibit Paramount sales to Elbit? The country’s National Prosecuting Authority has been instructed to prosecute South Africans serving in the IDF. Will this actually happen? Will the DTI stop stores from selling products incorrectly labeled and will South Africa cut trade ties with Israel and impose Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)?
Momentum has grown, and people are raging against the machine. The South African government is in the spotlight. It will be forced to show where its red lines are drawn and where its allegiance really lies. The people are watching.
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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site every week.
Politics
Coffee Act 2023: Government Grip Over Sector a Perilous Policy Decision
The government has not the resources necessary to revive the ailing coffee sector. The proposed Coffee Act 2023 should make room for the private sector as it has both the capacity and the experience to play a significant role in the revival of the moribund sector.
The proposed Coffee Act 2023 has serious limitations and the reforms it recommends may fail to halt the rapid decline of a crucial sector that is in dire need of an urgent rescue agenda to restore it to its former glory.
The Bill currently before parliament does not sufficiently address the question of how it will tackle the twin challenges facing the coffee sector – an opaque marketing system that has over the years been accused of defrauding smallholder farmers who largely sell their coffee beans through the Nairobi Coffee Exchange (NCE) auction, and decline in production and productivity as farmers struggle to buy costly farm inputs in the face of dwindling returns, or abandon coffee farming altogether to pursue more lucrative ventures.
Strangely, the proposed Bill – first mooted by the previous regime of President Uhuru Kenyatta – is also seeking to isolate coffee from a legal regime that has been governing the production, processing and marketing of scheduled commercial crops since 2013. The Crop Act was enacted in 2013 after agriculture was devolved under the 2010 constitution to enable the consolidation or repeal of various statutes related to specific crops and create the conditions necessary for the development of these crops.
Also enacted in 2013, the Agriculture and Food Authority Act that created the Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA) defines the authority’s regulatory and operational functions in implementing the Crop Act 2013 and makes provisions for the respective roles of the national and county governments in crop production, processing and marketing. The new AFA Act collapsed several institutions into AFA directorates and repealed the statutes that had created them. The major casualties of the laws that were repealed included the Coffee Act of 2001 that had been revised in 2012, the Sugar Act of 2001, the Tea Act (Cap 343) and the Cotton Act, among 13 other Acts.
Although the other crops have also failed to achieve the results envisaged by the Crop Act 2013 for various reasons, coffee has been of particular interest both politically and economically at the national government level and at the level of the county governments in regions that produce it, especially Mt. Kenya, a vote-rich region whose voting pattern could easily be swayed by the prevailing economic situation during an election period. Despite the numerous challenges facing the coffee sector, thousands of smallholder farmers still hold on to the crop, optimistic that every successive government will turn it around.
Production has declined significantly over the years and a crop that once yielded over 130,000 tons annually in the late ‘80s, earning smallholder farmers huge fortunes, only managed a paltry 34,512 tons of clean coffee in 2021 and just over 53,000 tons last year. The poor farm gate prices that accrue to those farmers – largely smallholder ones – auctioning coffee through cooperatives at the NCE have provoked debate among politicians, farmers and other affected industry actors. There have been claims of cartel-like dealings along the marketing value chain, with corrupt government officials looking the other way as dealers at the auction profit from dubious deals unchallenged, making the sector reforms a Herculean task for any establishment.
One of the leading problems associated with these unfair practices is the role of the marketing agents, who are accused of colluding with the millers and buyers to manipulate prices to the disadvantage of smallholder farmers. They are appointed by officials of cooperative societies to look after smallholder farmers’ interests at the auction, where 25,126 of the 34,512 tons of coffee produced in 2021 were sold. The election of cooperative officials is itself marred with malpractices and a lot of external interference.
Before the current Bill was drafted, there was an attempt by Moses Kuria, the then Gatundu Member of Parliament, to change the Crop Act in 2019 to allow only the export of processed coffee. According to Kuria, by disallowing the export of raw coffee from the country, the proposed amendment would ensure a favourable balance of trade and payment.
“Clause 2 of the Bill seeks to amend section 40 of the Crop Act 2013 to compel the Cabinet Secretary in consultations with the AFA and County Governments while making regulations, to ensure the coffee is exported only in processed form having been roasted, milled, parked and branded and clearly labelled ’a made in Kenya’ inscription,” Kuria’s memorandum read.
However, the proposed Bill now before parliament deviates from this intention. It instead allows only roasters and small businesses to buy coffee from the NCE for processing to promote local consumption. The Bill does not address the main challenge facing coffee marketing. It does not insulate farmers from the unfair practices that industry stakeholders have raised in the past. A buyer, a roaster, a grower miller, or a broker appointed by the grower will continue to be allowed to trade at the Exchange where the coffee will continue to be sold in its raw form.
Sceptics argue that without dismantling the cartels running the coffee sector, which requires the political goodwill that has been lacking, the ongoing reform efforts in the coffee sector will fail. Addressing a coffee reform forum convened in Meru recently by Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, Embu Governor Cecily Mbarire named three companies that she claimed control Kenya’s coffee marketing. She accused the three companies of buying coffee at the Exchange through different company subsidiaries whose directors work closely to manipulate prices in collusion with corrupt government officials. Agriculture CS Mithika Linturi’s threat to revoke the licences of all those involved in the corrupt practices within a week came to nothing.
The problem starts with how the marketing agents are appointed. This is done by the officials of cooperative societies who are elected periodically by members. The elections have in the past been cited as citadels of corruption that have been infiltrated by actors in the coffee value chain who influence the choice of officials to maintain the status quo.
In 2021, former Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Peter Munya, who led the first phase of the coffee reforms, spoke about mismanagement in the coffee sector cooperative societies, saying that farmers lose their earnings through a flawed management of the chain of production and marketing. The proposed Bill recommends democratising the process of selecting millers and marketing agents by farmers through the holding of factory meetings where several bidders pitch their services. However, this process will require strong goodwill and is not fully insulated from manipulation by well-coordinated cartels.
Agriculture CS Mithika Linturi’s threat to revoke the licences of all those involved in the corrupt practices within a week came to nothing.
If the Bill does not address the need for the cooperatives to have independent marketing agents at the auction who will serve the farmers’ interests and not those of buyers and millers, the fortunes of the farmers will remain unchanged. The success of the proposal that millers make all the necessary disclosures to enable farmers to arrive at an informed decision – disclosure on milling costs, handling and storage charges and other fees and milling losses that the Bill caps at US$40 per ton – will depend on who serves as the marketing agents, how they will be appointed and their inclinations. Although the Bill requires a commercial miller to ensure that the grower or grower’s representative is given reasonable notice to be present during the milling, this will not enhance accountability if the process of appointing the marketing agents is not transparent from the outset.
Direct sales will not offer any reprieve since the Bill requires the prices to be favourable to those at the NCE. The Bill also requires that a commercial miller or a broker appointed in consultation with a commercial miller prepare a sales catalogue for all coffee in licensed warehouses in consultation with the Exchange and the growers. Cases where marketing agents have downgraded coffee to depress prices and offered reserve prices that are too high – and that can easily be leaked in a cartel-like marketing regime, making the coffee unsalable at the first auction and resulting in the downward scaling of prices at subsequent auctions – have in the past been cited as some of the ways by which farmers are exploited.
However, other provisions address administrative issues such as settling the proceeds of the auction in a direct system operated by the Capital Markets Authority (CMA), thus prohibiting a broker or an agent appointed by a grower and other service providers from receiving the proceeds on behalf of the growers and holding them for other commercial activities not related to the coffee sector. Currently, marketing agents trade with farmers’ money through forex conversion, fixed deposit earnings and by making loan advances to unsuspecting farmers at prohibitive interest rates with the connivance of the societies.
A past report of a task force led by Prof. Joseph Kieyah, Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on the Coffee Sub-sector, recommended prompt payment to farmers for coffee delivered to coffee mills, the opening up of the Exchange for farmers to directly trade at the auction, and the creation of a coffee production subsidy. The report also called for reforms in the coffee cooperatives to strengthen them and to enable farmers to hold them to account, and proposed such measures as capping administrative expenses at 15 per cent and penalties for entities that fail to comply with the law.
The industry now seeks a multi-pronged approach to be included in the proposed reforms, which includes the processing and promotion of specialty coffee from Kenya to global markets as is the case in Ethiopia, which has won trademarks for three of its specialty coffees. Coffee is Ethiopia’s main export commodity, contributing to the livelihoods of more than 15 million smallholder farmers and other actors in the sector.
According to the Ethiopia Coffee and Tea Authority (ECTA) report, Ethiopia’s six-month coffee export revenue grew by US$274 million in the first half of the 2021/22 fiscal year. The country also has an impressive local consumption of coffee, with an estimated 42 per cent of the coffee produced going to the domestic market, of which around 5 per cent is smuggled in cross-border trade and traded on the black market. The rest is traded and exported through the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX), which sells around 80 to 85 per cent of the exported coffee.
The price of coffee in Ethiopia has continued to rise. The ECTA introduced “Vertical Integration” into the sector, a scheme that was approved in 2021. The new regulation allows exporters to bypass the ECX and buy coffee directly from aggregators or small washing stations.
With the liberalisation of the coffee market, farmers can decide where to deliver their berries based on the price offered. Moreover, demand has continued to rise and local cooperatives such as washing stations are benefiting from higher competition among buyers.
On 28 January 2020, in collaboration with the National Bank of Ethiopia, the ECTA issued a directive called the “Export Coffee Contract Administration” that fixes a minimum coffee export price based on the global weighted average price attributed to the different grades of coffee from various regions. Exporters submit their contracts to the NBE at the end of each day. They are submitted to another team that compares the prices with international and local coffee prices and uses an average weighted method to calculate a new minimum price upon which coffee exporters base their contract prices the following day.
With the liberalization of the coffee market, farmers can decide where to deliver their berries based on the price offered.
The Bill currently before the Kenyan parliament has introduced a very strong regulatory regime at both the county and the national level. It has failed to allocate any significant roles to the private sector in reviving the sector in areas such as production. Industry stakeholders cite resource constraints facing both the county and national governments and the underfunding of the agriculture sector as issues of major concern. Coffee dealers argue that the correct prescriptive policy would have been for the government to create a conducive environment to allow the private sector players room to grow the sector.
Two agricultural sectors stand as an example of why the immense and ambitious roles that the Bill allocates to both the national and county governments at the expense of the private sector could be a dangerous policy decision.
Let us start with the cashew nuts sector. Despite policy deficiency, the sector showed promising signs when local private processors (through Kenya Nuts Processors Association – NutPAK – which had pushed hard for a ban of raw nut exports) teamed up with growers’ associations, researchers at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI; now renamed Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organisation – KALRO), and the coast provincial administration to revitalise the cashew nut sector. This was after President William Ruto, then Agriculture Minister, banned the export of raw nuts in 2009 following a report by a task force that had collected views from industry stakeholders and recommended such a move to enable processors who have created more capacity to obtain enough raw materials.
The revitalisation team agreed, as a first measure, on a minimum farm gate price every harvest season, the establishment of collection centres to rid the industry of middlemen, and increased production and productivity by replacing ageing and unproductive trees with high-yielding, fast-maturing varieties to be developed by KARI and supplied through nurseries managed by farmers.
The efforts kicked off well in the two years preceding devolution. However, when the agriculture function was devolved and the provincial administration – which was championing the revival efforts – was restructured, the initiative failed to transition into the new governance order. While the county governments in the cashew-growing regions have spoken about the importance of the cashew sector over the years since devolution, they have failed to develop policies and plans for the revival of the sector and have allocated very few resources to agriculture and to the cashew nut sector in particular, leading to a significant drop in production.
Coffee dealers argue that the correct prescriptive policy would have been for the government to create a conducive environment to allow the private sector players room to grow the sector.
Although drought was blamed for the decline in production in 2021, in reality, the cashew nut sector has been in free-fall since 2013. The 2022 AFA Year Book of Statistics reports that production in the coast region during the year under review decreased from 12,668 tons in 2020 to 9,121 tons in 2021.
Once a top earner for the coast region, the value of the cashew nut produced decreased from KSh587.25 million in 2020 to KSh457.4 million in 2021, with less than 20 per cent of the processed crop destined for export. The rest was processed through cottage industries and consumed locally, a strange turn of events for a crop whose harvest could attain over 40,000 metric tons in its heyday. The low volumes have kept the big players out of the scene, with the newly created processing plants struggling to obtain the raw material to keep their production lines running.
The other crop that illustrates the danger presented by the proposed increased control over the coffee value chain is macadamia, which is, coincidentally, largely produced in the Mt. Kenya region where coffee is also popular. Although a Bill to regulate the nut sector has been tabled at the national level, the sector has grown in the last decade largely due to the immense support of a competing private sector seeking to increase production to utilise their installed capacity. However, since 2021, several factors have conspired to threaten it: the emergence of more macadamia-producing countries in the world including China, and a decline in the quality of nuts harvested due to poor and uncontrolled harvesting techniques, a regulatory issue that can only be tackled by both the county and national governments.
Despite the significant growth of the sector, the county governments in macadamia-growing regions have failed to consolidate the gains of the previous decade. Today, farmers receive not more than KSh30 per kilo of nuts at the farm gate, down from the KSh200 they received in the pre-COVID-19 period. The sector now faces collapse due to the emergence of other competing cash crops.
The proposed Coffee Bill 2023 seeks to revive and restructure the defunct CBK but fails to assign production and marketing roles to traders despite their huge investments; millers, processors, marketing agents and other dealers do not see any goodwill in the revival efforts. According to Pius Ngugi, who has operated Thika Coffee Mill for many years and is one of the biggest indigenous coffee processors in the country, this is likely to affect the proposed reforms to be undertaken by the revived CBK and the county governments.
Although drought was blamed for the decline in production in 2021, in reality, the cashew nut sector has been in free-fall since 2013.
The stated objectives of the 2013 Cash Crop Act that the current Bill appears to reverse were the need to circumvent regulatory bureaucracy in the crop subsectors and remove unnecessary regulations and levies, and the reduction of overlap and duplication of roles to promote the competitiveness of the crops, and more importantly, attract and promote private investment in agricultural crops.
Even at the CBK board level, traders do not have representation. The proposed members include a chairman, the Principal Secretary in charge of trade, the Principal Secretary in charge of cooperatives, two smallholder farmers, two coffee estate farmers, a nominee from the proposed Coffee Research Institute (CRI), one person from an association of farmers and the Chief Executive Officer, who will also double as the Board’s secretary.
The previous Coffee Act, which was repealed when the sector was placed under the AFA as a Coffee Directorate, provided room for the inclusion of players from the private sector and gave the minister in charge of agriculture the opportunity to appoint board members based on their interests and expertise in the coffee industry. The composition of the CBK board would have borrowed a leaf from Oils and Nuts Development Bill 2023, also in parliament, which suggests a similar board with the inclusion of a processor with ten years’ experience to grow nuts the sector. The proposed CBK board also contrasts with the provisions of the proposed Nuts and Oil Crops Development Bill 2023, which seeks to play a similar role as the CBK that proposes the inclusion of a processor with at least ten years of experience in its board.
The government, through the CBK and the county governments, has a crucial regulatory role to play to protect all the industry stakeholders. This regulatory role should create room to allow various investors in the sector to fill the investment gaps that affect the production, processing and marketing of coffee. For instance, the proposed Bill requires the county governments to offer extension services in the areas of sustainable production, primary processing of coffee and climate-smart agriculture, all of which are resource-intensive activities that it is doubtful they will fund satisfactorily.
The Bill also gives the CRI the responsibility – in collaboration with the county governments – of disseminating coffee production and processing technologies, propagating coffee planting materials, supervising nursery operations, issuing seeds, mapping out areas suitable for coffee production in Kenya, and capacity building, all costly undertakings that the private sector has a proven record of successfully performing. These roles can be played by the private sector with much ease and innovation based on their growing needs and market knowledge.
Despite the significant growth of the sector, the county governments in macadamia-growing regions have failed to consolidate the gains of the previous decade.
A good example of this will suffice to illustrate the point. A KSh240 million cashew nut production revival project has successfully been undertaken in a partnership that includes the European Union and the Visegrád Group of countries (V4) – Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – and Tensenses Ltd, now Grow Fairly. Close to 1 million new high-yielding cashew nut trees have been planted at the coast from a nursery that was created five years ago when the project commenced. The 15,000 farmers registered to grow organic cashew nuts were provided with materials and other support while the coast county governments subsidised the purchase of seedlings from the nursery. Early this year, the company opened a new factory that will process 2,400 tons of cashew nuts per year once the new crop is fully established.
Under the repealed Coffee Act, commercial millers could give farmers credit in the form of money and farm inputs to be recovered from the proceeds of coffee sales. The proposed Bill has thrown this out of the window and barred millers and marketing agents from providing loans or advances to coffee farmers at an interest. This, according to the thinking of the drafters of the Bill, will encourage the farmers to access berry advances at a rate of 3 per cent.
In effect, in October 2023 the government approved a KSh4 billion advance for coffee farmers that is expected to boost their earnings. However, agriculture ministers from coffee-growing counties have decried the low uptake of the KSh3 billion berry advance that the previous government had provided over the previous four years.
In December last year, Kiplimo Lagat, the Nandi County Executive Committee (CEC) member in charge of Agriculture and Co-operative Development argued that, from its inception, the fund was poorly crafted and thus failed to attract farmers who were wary of its unclear objectives and fearful of its outcomes.
“There is a need for the government to rethink the concept under which the fund was established to make it more attractive to the farmers. Perhaps the fund is suffering from structural challenges thus scaring away farmers,” he said.
The fund was established in early 2019 to help coffee farmers across the country resolve the problem of delays in the coffee payment cycle. According to the top management of New Kenya Planters Cooperative, by December last year, only KSh401 million had been advanced to farmers in the coffee-growing counties since the inception of the fund. James Wachihi, Nyeri CEC member in charge of agriculture, could see no clear reasons for the low uptake of the fund.
According to Ngugi of Thika Coffee Mills, the government should confine itself to ensuring a conducive environment for increased production and promote marketing. The private sector has enough resources, he observed, adding that the government should encourage millers and other industry stakeholders to get involved in increasing coffee production through estates or by contracting farmers and providing them with farm inputs and other services via the cooperative societies to which they belong.
The existing environment does not leave room for such an arrangement since there is no guarantee of securing the raw material from the farmers once the support has been provided. Production has been in decline due to lack of resources and high poverty levels among the smallholder farmers, the high costs of farm inputs, and the lack of a supportive framework that would include the provision of extension services.
Under the repealed Coffee Act, commercial millers could give farmers credit in the form of money and farm inputs to be recovered from the proceeds of coffee sales.
Farmers have also divested from coffee to go into other lucrative ventures. Coffee is now grown in 33 counties, the major coffee-growing counties being Kiambu, Kirinyaga, Nyeri, Murang’a, Kericho and Bungoma. In 2020/21, the coffee sub-sector recorded a 6.4 per cent decline in production, down from 36,873 tons to 34,512 tons of clean coffee – particularly in the high-production counties. Kiambu, the biggest coffee-producing county, saw estate farms record a decline in acreage from 12,627 hectares in 2019 to 10,520 in 2021, with cooperatives recording a drop from 11,724 hectares to 8,585 hectares during the same period, according to AFA numbers. In much of the land lost, coffee ceded ground to real estate.
The KSh4 billion fund may have political connotations. It comes at a time when the sector is undergoing political turmoil, with the current efforts by Deputy President Gachagua, who is spearheading reforms in the sector, receiving divided views from various actors. The fund was created after President Ruto offered the six government-owned sugar millers in western Kenya a KSh117 billion lifeline. Mathioya Member of Parliament Edwin Mugo and Kiambu Women Representative Gathoni Wamuchomba decried the move publicly.
Buyers and traders have also kept away from the Exchange due to the confusion reigning in the licensing regime. In August this year, auctions dropped by over 95 per cent, reaching only 192 tons compared to over 4300 tons in the same month last year.
A significant amount of political goodwill is needed to revive the coffee sector. The county governments, which will implement national government policy on agriculture as prescribed in the constitution, must create synergies and integrate all stakeholders in implementing multi-pronged measures in order to put back cash into the farmers’ pockets. Given the resource constraints at both the national and county government levels, the focus should be on creating a conducive environment for the private sector to drive the ongoing efforts to revive the coffee sector.
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