The
clash between Machakos Governor Alfred Mutua and the local senator, Mr
Johnstone Muthama, is a classic case of the future-meets-past.
The
two are in court and I would not want to get in trouble by commenting
on the issues being litigated, but based on their public statements, a
stark picture of leadership in devolved Kenya emerges.
Dr
Mutua is, I think, my contemporary. He started his career here in the
Daily Nation as a travel columnist. But it is as Government Spokesman
that he came to public attention.
He did not always
come across as a paragon of gravitas, generally being a man who talks
too much. And his decision to speak, not for the whole government but
for the side buttering his bread, namely former President Kibaki’s side,
cost him a few admirers.
It is through his performance
at, first, the party gubernatorial nominations and later at the
elections that he won the respect of many of his critics.
He
wasn’t all mouth, after all. Without necessarily arguing that he is an
angel from Planet Jupiter, which he is not, he has something different
to offer as a governor. He is ambitious and quite bold in his
development pipe-dreams.
And the way he is thinking of
taking advantage of Masaku’s biggest asset -– the fact that it is 40
kilometres from Nairobi – shows that a leader with a PhD is perhaps
better than one who has barely scraped through the hallowed halls of the
village poly.
A good example is the preparations that
Machakos is making to its stadium to host international matches. It’s
good publicity for the town and revenue right there that I probably
would not have thought of.
Mutua is a man of
razzmatazz, a PR man who might place greater value on the presentation,
rather than substance, an appreciator more of the sizzle than the
sausage. But David Cameron is a PR man and is getting on quite well.
But
it is in his dream of dreams, the new city, which defines his kind of
leadership which, in my view, is what the future of counties will be
made of. The former Masaku County Council had 2,000 acres of land which
the governor is proposing to give free to investors. They will build
factories and service facilities, creating hundreds of jobs and wealth
for the county.
One further encomium: we are fighting
governors for spending huge sums of money to build offices for
themselves. The Machakos solution of getting corporates to donate
materials, I thought, was quite good. Why haven’t the others thought of
it?
Let me say I have no superior knowledge of the
workings of the Machakos county government. I don’t know whether the
schemes are honest and will work as advertised. I am just shooting off
my mouth on the basis of information in the public domain.
Mr
Muthama, on the other hand, is a dyed-in-the-wool old school, fiery
politician, given to the issuance of strong statements and a manic
abundance of energy.
He says he is completely
suspicious of Mutua’s plans; why is he giving away good land for free?
Sell it, he says. By his mathematics, if the land was sold, it would
realise Sh24 billion which should be equally distributed to every
Machakos constituency for building water dams/pans.
Machakos
is a dry area, so I guess the people and their animals would have a
refreshing drink from the dams/pans. Others may use it for irrigation
and grow more food. And so on. This is a somewhat practical approach to
development, I’ll grant you that.
So there are two visions: one for a city of the future, another for water dams/pans. The past runs slam into the future.
***
Talking
counties, the governor of Tharaka Nithi county, a Mr Ragwa, is talking
lawsuits and land-grabbing. He has laid claim to Meru National Park,
which everyone thought was in Meru County, and promised to go to the
Supreme Court to settle an old land dispute.
He has
sworn not to use alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, such as
calling in elders who adjudicate in such cases, to resolve the matter.
In
the neighbouring Embu county, there is talk of an international airport
and applying some Brazilian technology to build roads cost-effectively.
If your county government is not going global and thinking big, it will look for some village quarrel to waste your future on.
mmathiu@ke.nationmedia.com
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