Why Kenya Is On The Path To Imminent Collapse

From The Economist AS THE sun goes down over Nairobi, a new rich set of T-shirt-wearing Kenyans, most of them black and in their 30s, roar with laughter as they quaff whiskies and smoke giant cigars in the Capital Club, the country’s latest temple to Mammon. A year’s membership, a beautiful waitress proudly purrs, is “a million shillings”—about $10,000. Your correspondent watches English football on one of four large television screens, alongside a wall of faux-Masai shields, while waiting for his would-be host, the spokesman of President Uhuru Kenyatta. Alas, the spokesman fails to turn up; it is a Saturday evening, but the president is apparently too busy to spare him. Mr Kenyatta, one of Kenya’s richest oligarchs, who next month will complete his first year in office, is reportedly fond of similar ritzy watering-holes. Barely a mile away from the Capital Club, the acrid fumes of charcoal fires in Kibera, a notorious slum, mingle with the stench of sewage running down the muddy alleys where perhaps 800,000 Nairobians live in hugger-mugger squalor. The government, says May Achieng, who runs a church-linked school there, provides “absolutely nothing” in the way of services. Manual workers lucky enough to have a job in the metropolis can earn 200-300 shillings ($2-3) a day. Domestic and gang violence are rife. Armed police have a station at the entrance to Kibera, but generally keep out of the slum. Visitors are warned to watch out for robbers and “flying toilet”—bags of excrement chucked out of houses at night. Politicians, says Mrs Achieng, turn up only at election time, “or if there is a fire or some kind of disaster”. These two Kenyas exist cheek by jowl, both of them, in their way, equally dynamic. Half a century after independence from Britain, rich and poor are both locked into a system of patronage and tribe, all competing for advancement, whether for modest jobs in the civil service or for huge bribes to fix contracts for grand infrastructure projects. In the aftermath of a disputed election in 2007, Kibera, whose districts are unofficially divided along tribal lines, was affected as bloodily as anywhere. “One community chopped off the sexual organs of another community,” says Mrs Achieng, a Luo, whose leader, Raila Odinga, was reckoned by independent observers to have been cheated of victory. Defeated again last year, in a fairer though still flawed poll, he remains the opposition’s head.Follow the link below to read the article in full a<"http://whereiskenya.com/alarmed-world-sounds-death-knell-kenya-kenya-path-imminent-collapse/">