Beware of the Money Dispensing Activists

By: Abdillahi Alawy
Of all the words that are used by our media houses in Nairobi, the words activism and activists have had a really bad application and reputation among consumers of Kenya news. While I am deliberately blaming the media for this sin, I also sincerely sympathize with the press because there is currently a huge miss-understanding of this word as it pertains to politics of corruption and campaigning. For example, we have continued to refer to the money-carrying, bribe giving individuals as activists while in actual sense they should be called campaign criminals.

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary an activist is a person “supporting a doctrine or practice that emphasizes direct vigorous action especially in support of or opposition to one side of a controversial issue.” And apparently, according to the Kenya’s media, an activist is anybody carrying bags of money to bribe people on behalf of the government. Additionally, it seems to me that activists are always working for the mainstream government as opposed to opposing it in its policies of cultural corruption.

This Kenya version of activism began during the previous regime and unfortunately is continued by Mwai Kibaki’s government via family members, presidential second wives’ government officials, and elected MPs. In one election before NARC, where Goldenberg money was not enough to bribe voters new currency notes, Shs. 500, were actually minted and christened Jirongos after the famous one-time Rural Development minister Mr. Cyrus Jirongo, the activist of that time.

We learnt that this week, in Kakamega district, an irate mob burned down a vehicle belonging to a Narc-Kenya “activist” and businessman who survived only by using his gun to threaten the mob. However, an innocent youth aged 27 was killed in the fiasco. Two million shillings went in smoke as a result of this car-fire.

The so-called activists are in plenty in Kenya. And, they have a big impact on who we elect and who ends up in petition courts that take a full parliamentary-term to conclude. Everywhere you look you see activists carrying bribe money and angry mob waiting to kill an activist for what they stand and believe in. Activists change sides at the whiff of any amount of money.

Without question, the above mob action is to be condemned. People should not have their cars burned because they are giving activism a bad name. It would have been only appropriate to re-name the angry mob as the activists in the above story. They should have been named so because according to the dictionary activism is mainly in the opposing side not in the ruling/government side in this case. Many of the people we call activists change sides every now and then; and it becomes extremely difficult to know who not to call an activists.

For example, I do not believe that assistant minister Danson Mungatana or now his mentor former don Minister Joseph Kibwana are activists of any kind at any one time. These are people who will bitterly demonstrate against the government as long as they are not ministers and switch to praise the president in excess of God. Their only condition is for them to be offered ministerial positions. These are the money-bag activists of doom doubling as leaders who will change sides at a heart-beat.

Activism is an honorable term of service to the community and it has to be built around honesty and purpose for the good of the disadvantaged and the disfranchised in the opposing side of the corrupt elite. May be activism could be via the opposition or on the mainstream side; but activism is different from political campaigning where cash money is utilized to entice voters to follow bad candidates.

Activists like the gentleman who used his gun to scare the angry mob are a new breed of corrupt cash-dispensers working for a government that cannot win an election without resorting to such tactics. Activists like this man should be appropriately called cash-mongers or something else.

The most surprising thing about these four-wheel cash-dispensing rendezvous and their subsequent news stories is that as much as they grab our newspapers’ headlines and attention of all the citizens, the Kenya anti-corruption organs are ever quiet about these criminals. Wouldn’t an investigation of the Shs 2,000,000 in relation to “campaigning” for NARC be a logical issue to be followed up in a legal investigation?

But who knows what our Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) officials are doing? I bet they consider themselves as savior of this government such that they could be called “activists.”

The KACC outfit in Kenya has openly come out to protect this government with all what it has. KACC has discredited witnesses, video and audio evidence and intimidated witness. Just two days ago, KACC gave an expected gloomy report of how efforts to recover billions of shillings looted by the former and current regimes are failing; thus, protecting the big-time thieves who are still conducting furious campaigns in the villages to regain power. These are the chief sponsors of the very criminal minded money-bags we call activist. We must avoid using this term to refer to bad people.