KENYA: Government fires female technocrats, praises them for a job well done

NAIROBI, Kenya (The East African), May 26, 2008: LAST WORD Government fires female technocrats, praises them for a job well done JUST WHAT do you have to do to retain a job? That must be the question former top Kenyan civil servants are asking, after they were sacked just days before the departments they headed topped a government-sponsored performance survey. Among the unlucky bureaucrats is the former permanent secretary in the Ministry of Gender, Sports and Culture, which took first position in the survey, Rachael Dzombo. Also dropped was Rachel Arunga, PS in the Special Programmes Ministry, which came in third, and Alice Mayaka, PS in the Ministry of National Heritage, which bagged seventh position. It may of course be no more than a coincidence, but all them are, well, women! The impatience of would-be witches SOME THINGS are too savagery bizarre to comprehend. Like the murder last week of 15 elderly women and men, aged between 80 and 94, in one blood-drenched day by roving gangs in some southwestern districts of Kenya, for allegedly practising witchcraft. It is unclear how the gangs identified their potential victims, but the local administration says that it is possible some of the victims could have been butchered to give way to impatient heirs. Incredibly, the thugs who perpetrated the killings codenamed their thuggery “Operation Okoa-Maisha” — Operation Save Lives — the same as an ongoing security operation by the police around Mt Elgon. The ingratitude of South Africans exposed THEY WITHSTOOD punitive cross-border raids, hosted thousands of refugees and used their meagre resources to train freedom fighters against the apartheid regime, and so it is bewildering and shocking to many in the so-called Frontline States that South Africans have developed such a murderous rage against them in less than two decades. The xenophobic attacks in that country, which by the end of last week had resulted in the death of at least 25 “foreigners,” are likely to have far-reaching consequences for South African businesses in regions such as East Africa, where the country has always been regarded with some suspicion. President Thabo Mbeki’s African Renaissance, apparently, is in danger of being stillborn. Imagine, something worse than a lawyer! IF A thousand lawyers at the bottom of the sea are an anchor, what do you call a hundred fake ones in court? A scandal? That’s exactly what is facing the Law Society of Kenya after it emerged that the body has been unable to police its ranks, leading to some conmen masquerading as advocates and even representing clients in court and obtaining judgments. “It is bad enough dealing with an authentic lawyer,” one Nairobi wag observed last week. “But to have to deal with a fraudster who is not even a lawyer? That’s like being hit by a train – twice!” Copyright © 2005, Nation Media Group Ltd