In Kenya, we hire and fire via the media

The subject of the peculiarity of Kenyans’ habits has engaged us repeatedly since the late Wahome Mutahi (Whispers) penned his book, How to be a Kenyan in 2001.

The peculiarities are many enough to fit a book of two or more volumes. There is one that has bothered me since the early days of former President Daniel arap Moi in 1978 and which I will hopefully find a credible explanation for by writing about it.

How do you go public with a job appointment for somebody without first consulting and obtaining the full agreement of that person?

Forget about how much it has been done and seemingly taken to be normal. I found it bizarre the first time I heard about it more than 30 years ago and still do. I have never been able to understand it, even a little bit. Whoever can make sense of this most Kenyan of official behaviour, kindly call me.

We now know that members of the “new” technical bench of Harambee Stars heard about their appointment for the first time like you and me – in a public announcement by their “employers”.

Let us for one minute forget that they have since not heard a word about it from the makers of that announcement; that is just compounding a situation that didn’t make sense in the first place.

NO OFFICIAL COMMUNICATION

Listen to the purported Harambee Stars new coach, Mr Bobby Williamson: “As far as I am concerned, Adel (Amrouche) is still Harambee Stars coach and it is therefore wrong for me to comment about the possibility of assuming his role. At the moment, I am still God Mahia’s coach.”

And this is what Musa Otieno, supposedly Williamson’s assistant, had to say: “I last heard from these guys the day they announced my appointment (August 5) but we have never sat down to discuss anything.”

Like the real Kenyan he is, Musa actually took his “appointment” seriously, incredible as this might seem to any reasonable person. In fact, he even used that most beloved of corporate words – “vision”. He said: “I need to share with them a short-medium-and long term vision even as I wait for the paper work to be completed. At the moment, I have no association with the national team.”

Only in Kenya can this sort of thing happen: An announcement made in public catches you by surprise. No follow-up call is made whatsoever.

Therefore, there is no way of knowing that the terms of engagement will be acceptable to you. And you are still able to talk about your vision?

Suppose the terms, if and when they are finally put on the table, go something like this: Oooh, we don’t have enough money, Oooh, we are trying to rope in some sponsors, Oooh, this position requires a patriotic Kenyan, Oooh, please understand that when things look up we shall not forget you, Oooh, we therefore want to interest you in working pro bono for us? That will be acceptable? I don’t understand this at all, at all. And yet I am a Kenyan.

You want to imagine that before offering anybody a job, if you have any modicum of respect for that person, you would first and foremost give the prospective appointee a call. Then you would lay all your cards on the table. There is every likelihood that the person might ask for some time to think about it. Responsible people usually would.

Such a person, having all the information that he or she needs, might wish to make some consultations with family members and friends. After all, the appointment will affect them, won’t it? But all this counts for nothing. What exactly goes on in the mind of a person who goes public with an appointment without factoring all these considerations? Or factors them but doesn’t care? What is the private opinion of such an employer of the prospective employee?

MOI TRADITION

It is President Moi who started it. For all the years of his rule, the 1 pm KBC news broadcast came to be tool of great terror and hope for his civil servants – and prospective civil servants.

That is when people got hired and fired without their prior knowledge. You could be deep in the countryside tending to your goats and then the farm hand comes breathless, awash in sweat:
“Congratulations, Mzee! Heh! God is great!” It would take a while for the recipient of the congratulations to learn that he was now a full cabinet minister. One newly appointed minister learnt of his appointment in a service station as he sat in a public bus in Nakuru. The bus was refuelling.

Lowly passengers had the singular honour of riding in a bus with a full cabinet minister from Nakuru to Nairobi. They praised his humility.

The reverse was equally earth shaking: ministers and senior civil servants would be going about their official duties with gusto only to perceive a new sudden, depressed mood among their staff.

Hey, what’s going on around here, they would ask. That is when the bravest among the staff would volunteer that the radio has just announced that you have been fired with immediate effect. By that time, practical junior staff in the know would already have taken off as if the sacked big man had suddenly been diagnosed with Ebola, plucking off the flag from the car as they went. It was traumatizing.

Hiring and firing people in public without the decency of letting them know beforehand is a relic of by-gone era. It is incredible that it can take place in this day and age. It is equally unbelievable that somebody would play along. But maybe there is something I don’t know. I simply can’t understand it.

****** ******

REMEMBERING JOMO KENYATTA

It was 36 years to the day the founding president of this country, Jomo Kenyatta, died Frida. Among the last people he met before breathing his last in the small hours was Kenya’s all-conquering team to the 1978 Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, Canada.

By the accounts of those who worked for him and knew him as a person, old President Kenyatta was loathe to show his frailties, even when they were obvious to those around him. He would thus push himself to the outer limits of his endurance. One of the consequences of this trait is that he attended to all public events listed in his diary, quite often contrary to his doctors’ considered opinion.

He was in no physical shape to make the long, exhausting trip to Msambweni in Kwale and then meet Kenya’s diplomats posted overseas and then meet its sports heroes, all in addition to a reunion with his family members, the last as it would turn out.

In his meeting with sportsmen, he tried to demonstrate that he was on top of his game. Stephen Muchoki, whom the President would award an MBS for his sterling exploits as Commonwealth and World champion in the light flyweight category, saw all this from the closest quarters. Actually, the President engaged him in a mock fight.

“The President was a very gracious host to us,” Muchoki told me. “He entertained us to sumptuous lunch and spoke of how proud he was about the way we had represented Kenya. He pinned the MBS medals on the jacket lapels of Henry Rono and me. It was an extraordinary moment.

As members of the contingent filed away after the ceremony, he sent for the two of us.

“We stood in awe in front of him surrounded by ministers, senior civil servants and the Commonwealth team delegation chiefs. He took out his bakora (walking stick) and raised it in a mock fight with me, saying he wanted to test just how good I was. I respectfully told him, ‘No, no, Mzee, I don’t fight like that.’ Everybody laughed. The President appeared to be really enjoying himself”.

Two days later, the Old Man was gone. Muchoki and his team mates were devastated. But there is something the President had promised them.

When he called back the two, he had told his assembled ministers and other government big men: “I want each of these two to get eight of the best grade cattle my Government has on its farms mara moja.’ (Immediately!) And some goats should also be added to those cows.” This story has never been disputed. It has witnesses, some in high positions of government.

Why did Kenyatta give them cows? Because it was very much like him to do so. He loved cows. There is no better insight into this aspect of his character than this excerpt from Walking in Kenyatta Struggles by Duncan Ndegwa, Kenya’s first Head of the Public Service and Secretary to the Cabinet:

“Kenyatta the farmer kept cows at his Njiru farm on the outskirts of the city and, once in a while, his journey to the office from Gatundu was interrupted by his urge to see the cows. He supplied milk to the then Kenyatta College and the cheque he got for it was on occasions, a source of pride that he could not hide. “He would keep the cheque in his coat pocket for a long time and when the appropriate moment came, he took it out and displayed it with a sense of satisfaction and said, “Who says Kenyatta is not a farmer?

Look at this. Is it not a cheque from my milk?” Like many others, that cheque had gone stale and the bank would be forced to issue a replacement.”

His gesture to Rono and Muchoki was thus something from the heart, probably the best thing he could think of giving the young men for their service to the country. But his order was never fulfilled. When Muchoki and Rono went to pursue it with the Ministry of Culture under which sports fell, Mr Darius Mbela, then the Permanent Secretary, barked at them: “Nyinyi sasa mmeanza kulete siasa!” (You people have now started bringing up politics!). Before they could say a word, they were out of his office – by order!

Today, Muchoki walks the streets of Nairobi in anonymous irrelevance. He is almost a destitute. The other week on NTV, Dr Hassan Wario, Cabinet Secretary for Sports, said that as soon as the Heroes Act becomes operational, people like Joe Kadenge, Mahmoud Abbas, Bobby Ogolla etc will get their just recognition as national heroes.

Presumably, Stephen Muchoki will make the list – no other Kenyan boxer was ever world champion.

But how about doing the decent thing and fulfilling Old President Kenyatta’s order that those two gentlemen be given eight of the best grade cows the Agricultural Development Corporation can raise, and some dairy goats to accompany them? Fulfilling a good wish, especially that of somebody who is gone, is a very proper thing to do. And it is far better to do this for living people than praising them when they are dead.