Now that America has come calling, let’s put the Look East policy on hold

Former US president Bill Clinton (left) received by Deputy President William Ruto at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on May 1, 2015. PHOTO | DPPS 

In Summary

• The level of Kenyan hypocrisy will be on full display. Jubilee government officials and leaders, party activists, and the usual cheering squads, praise singers, and hatemongers will be screaming themselves hoarse.
• The hypocrisy of the Look East brigade can also be seen in personal choices and investments. President Kenyatta, Mr Ruto, and their retinues do not look to China for their designer suits and watches. They look to Paris, Milan, London, and Zurich.
• They will suffer a sudden onset of amnesia on their shrill noises about Kenyan sovereignty, their chest-thumping theatrics against imperialist, neocolonial meddlers.

By MACHARIA GAITHO
More by this Author

Kenyan officials are no doubt rubbing their hands with glee on the visit of US Secretary of State John Kerry, hot on the heels of former President Bill Clinton, and both ahead of the much-awaited July homecoming of “our” US President Barack Obama.

The level of Kenyan hypocrisy will be on full display. Jubilee government officials and leaders, party activists, and the usual cheering squads, praise singers, and hatemongers will be screaming themselves hoarse.

The series of visits will, for them, be an indication of the unmatched esteem that President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government enjoys in Washington.

Lofty speeches will be delivered on the undying and historical links between Kenya and the United States and the usual begging bowl will be out, pleading for more money to build roads and bridges, provide food and medicine for the poor, and help in the fight against the Al-Shabaab terrorists.

KENYA NOT NEEDING THE WEST

Those currently genuflecting at the feet of Mr Kerry will be the very characters who have spent the better part of the past two years hurling brickbats and everything else, including the kitchen sink, at the US and other Western nations.

They will conveniently forget their puerile noises about Kenya not needing the West because it can turn to China for development aid and tourists.

They will suffer a sudden onset of amnesia on their shrill noises about Kenyan sovereignty, their chest-thumping theatrics against imperialist, neocolonial meddlers.

For them, the succession of visits will not just be about renewal and repairing of US-Kenya relations after the lull brought about by the unwise “choices have consequences” warnings ahead of the 2013 elections, but vindication of President Kenyatta’s “wise and sagacious” leadership.

It will be a reaffirmation that the anti-Western stance pursued by the Jubilee coalition of President Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto has brought to heel the countries that were openly uncomfortable about Kenya electing crimes-against-humanity suspects.

The praise singers and sycophants will not see the thawing of relations as a natural consequence of Mr Kenyatta winning his case, in a fashion, at the International Criminal Court and Mr Ruto also very likely to secure his freedom.

They will see it, instead, as a triumph of the fake nationalism and patriotism they have cloaked themselves with.

ALL A BIG RUSE

The truth of the matter, in any case, is that the Look East policy was all a big ruse. Yes, they looked to Chinese largesse to fund big development projects, but neglected the simple detail that the Easterners were not holding out freebies. What they offered was very expensive loans designed primarily to expand Chinese economic interests.

The hypocrisy of the Look East brigade can also be seen in personal choices and investments. President Kenyatta, Mr Ruto, and their retinues do not look to China for their designer suits and watches. They look to Paris, Milan, London, and Zurich.

They do not send their children to school in China — since they do not trust the public school system they manage for the rest of us — but to the priciest Tony and Ivy League academies in the US, Britain, and Switzerland.

When they catch the common cold, the facilities they turn to, since the Kenyatta National Hospital cannot be entrusted with their delicate constitutions, are not in Beijing, but the UK, US, Germany, and other such places.

And of course when they have dirty money to squirrel away from the Kenyan taxman and anti-fraud investigators, it is banks and properties in the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, UK, US, Australia, Bahamas, and other such places that win their favour. Not China.

Mr Kerry comes calling at a time when African solutions to African problems are sorely needed. Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram are causing immense suffering to innocents in Kenya, Somalia, and Nigeria.

Desperate Africans freeing African misrule are dying in their hundreds on those perilous boats to freedom and liberty in Europe. Misguided South African Afrophobes are raining terror on their African kith and kin. Just around the corner, Burundi might be on the verge of another ethnic fratricide.

Kenya is silent. The East African Community is impotent. The African Union is sterile. And we will ask for Western aid and intervention, while proclaiming our sovereignty and telling off Western meddlers. 

mgaitho@ke.nationmedia.com. @MachariaGaitho on Twitter