OPEN LETTER TO DR BEN OKITA
Chairperson, Consumptive Wildlife Taskforce

I write to you as a citizen of the world domiciled in the African Motherland, and particularly in a territory that the imperial British forces carved out and called "Kenya."

I would like to voice my loudest opposition to the proposal to introduce "wildlife consumption in Kenya.

By now, many Kenyans have been made privy to the heated debates surrounding the death of 11 rhinos in a botched translocation exercise by KWS, funded by WWF and overseen by the embattled Tourism minister Najib Balala. Now that Balala lost his cool and told  unnamed people to go to hell, Kenyans are spoiling for him to be fired.

​It appears that Balala is way out of his depth in handling this issue. But focus on his sacking still misses the crux of the debate.

Whether Jubilee wins this coming election or not, there's one thing that needs to go: Vision 2030. It has caused us so much grief, except for the business community and tenderpreneurs who are singing their way to the bank.

Vision 2030 was a boardroom document that did not involve broad consultation, especially with people outside the business sector. Four years after it was launched, Kenyans ratified a new constitution through a popular referendum. That Constitution should have overtaken Vision 2030 as the guiding document for Kenya's freedom and socio-economic growth. Instead, Vision 2030 remained in the drivers' seat, and seven years into the new dispensation, we have ended up with a list of sorrows.

In their book “The Big Conservation lie,” Mbaria and Ogada chronicle how KWS’s historical disregard for science and scientists has made the organization fail to protect the sovereignty of this nation, which includes our biodiversity and wildlife. 

One major element of this failure is the fact that KWS directors have rarely been scientists. Based on the managerialist myth that all organizations are run well if run as businesses, KWS has appointed a succession of directors who put more emphasis on business-style management than on actual environmental science or the sovereignty our nation. And by the Kenyan nation, I mean every living thing here, not just human beings.

The last time I blogged in horror about the president’s choice of words, it was after he trivialized the rape of a toddler. I hoped that I would never again hear the head of state use this kind of talk that assaults our dignity. But it appears that I will continually be proved wrong.

This time, the president was celebrating the completion (I think) of a railway that has raised the country’s debt and sacrificed our environment. But as if we the people have not lost enough, the president promised the death penalty to anyone who causes damage to the railway. The reasoning? That damaging the railway is economic sabotage and life threatening, and so the person who pulls a metal rod, from the snake Syokimau prophesied about, has committed murder.

Such language is unacceptable.

​​Your land must not be sold on a permanent basis, because you do not own it; it belongs to God and you are like foreigners who are allowed to make use of it. (Leviticus 25: 23)

​Since the doctors’ strike took a break, nothing has brought my heart such sorrow as the violence in Laikipia. My interest was sparked by a bus ride with a student who showed me pictures of tortured children and of animals shot dead, and who narrated, sometimes in tears, the agony of Kenyans suffering there. He is the one who challenged me to seek John Mbaria and Mordechai Ogada’s book The Big Conservation Lie, which has in turn led me to articles and lectures on conservation and pastoralism (which I shall list at the end of this post).

This week, I have been horrified by what I consider to be hateful, violent speech on social media from people whom members of the famous KOT (Kenyans on Twitter) consider to be President Uhuru’s mouthpieces. The first of this talk that I witnessed came from Pauline Njoroge, a self-proclaimed rags-to-riches communications officer at NEPAD, whose obnoxious facebook post doubting the value of Nairobi National Park went viral, and which I first saw on Diana Okello’s wall.

I’d only heard of Pauline Njoroge in passing just a few days before. But the ignorance in the post shocked me so much, that I decided to check Pauline Njoroge’s wall to check if, maybe, I was getting her wrong.