Stop playing politics with unga

Before I recently ventured into a supermarket to buy a number of household items, something that I don’t do too often for purely chauvinistic reasons, I did not know what people were talking about when they complained about the cost of living, which is spiralling out of control.

Indeed, I assumed it was the ordinary propagandistic chatter that occurs during election campaigns with politicians trying to score points by attributing the bad situation to the outgoing political regime. I was soon to be disabused of such notions when I saw the prices of everything.

I am a very poor shopper for I don’t even make a budget and tend to buy things on the fly. But this time, I went into one supermarket with a list of the items I wanted, jotting down the prices of each. Then I went into another and did the same thing, trying to find out whether one outlet was more lenient on the pocket than the other. No such luck. The attendants checking my activities must have been quite amused at the way I kept shaking the head and muttering to myself, but it was not strange to them. They have seen it all before.

Middle class

Let me put it this way; I consider myself to be a member of the middle class and immune to minor price shocks. After all, this is the class that keeps a country’s economy going – the highest number of consumers, taxpayers and all – and if its members are suffering from rising prices of goods and services, one does wonder how the poor, who are the majority, are coping with life. Is it any wonder that politicians who always batten on the misery of the poor have cynically seized on this fact and are milking it for all it’s worth?

Whenever I hear fellows who should know better lie that food prices started going up after President Uhuru Kenyatta and Mr Raila Odinga shook hands on March 9, 2018, I am totally disgusted. Politics is war and some dirty tactics can be tolerated, but this one goes beyond the pale. The reason is that a sizeable number of poor and not-so-poor Kenyans are swallowing this baloney wholesale, and are impervious to any counter-argument. Playing politics with food prices is quite insensitive and self-serving.

Lest I be misunderstood, I am not claiming that things are all right in this country. Indeed, the way the economy has been managed in the past 10 years leaves a great deal to be desired. But to try and convince the poor that they are poor because the government has made them so is ridiculous because it is not true.

I have not yet heard anyone tell Kenyans how he or she is going to address the issue of high food prices by waving a magic wand. Things never work that way.

Back in the 1970s when Uganda’s economy went to the dogs, despot Idi Amin, who had dedicatedly pushed the country to those depths, tried to dictate the prices of consumer goods. It did not work, so he resorted to printing money and the result was hyper-inflation. The Uganda currency became worthless overnight. Kenya is not that far gone, but food inflation is no joking matter and those who promise the hungry that they will reduce the price of unga overnight once they get into power are playing a potentially counter-productive game.

Quite beside the fact that external factors have been at play, the person who will convince me to give him my vote is the one who will demonstrate how this country will ever become food self-sufficient. It has been demonstrated that the continent at large is a net importer of food. The war in Ukraine may appear far-fetched as an explanation, but now it has emerged that Africa relies quite heavily on that country for cereals and edible oil raw materials, a supply that has been cut off because Russia is blockading Ukraine’s sea-ports.

Wars in far-off lands

This reliance on European countries for our food needs is something that has never made sense when we can actually grow all we need for domestic consumption and for export. At least a third of this country is blessed with rich agricultural lands, plenty of rivers for irrigation, moderate climate and an industrious population. Why then do we need to import maize, wheat, rice, sugar, legumes, fruit, palms and sunflower for making cooking oil? Except for imports like oil which we don’t have yet, wars in far-off lands should not really concern us.

Those using the price of unga as a campaign tool should show us where we went wrong and how to make it right.

While at it, they should say what role food cartels have played in the past, and how it has become impossible to irrigate arable land because the few dams that could have helped have been gulped down by avaricious individuals.

It is one thing to talk of easing the plight of the poor, but quite another to devise long-term policies which will ensure that never again shall our people starve in a land of plenty.

Mr Ngwiri is a consultant editor; [email protected]