Articles Tagged Sunday Nation

Does this happen to you often? You show up for a meeting, five minutes ahead of time. Fifteen minutes after the agreed time, some of the other participants start to filter in. It takes another fifteen minutes before you have a quorum. Hardly anyone is apologetic. Some invitees never show up at all, and never […]

Business leaders have been asking a question repeatedly since January 2008: “What am I going to do with my staff? After all the ethnic strife and bloodshed, some of them don’t want to sit with each other on the same table. There is mistrust and acrimony in the air, all over my company. All that […]

There is a lesson we must all learn: life is nothing if you don’t commit to it. In love, in business, in your career: you can’t ‘succeed big’ if you don’t ‘commit big’. If you want to be a winner, you have to decide what you want and how you’re going to get it. And […]

Our management deficit was in sharp focus again this week. Armed officers of the republic went on strike, and in the process threatened to endanger the fabric of the nation. The fact that they were prison officers, rather than policemen or soldiers, may have led many of us to trivialise the matter. That would be […]

In the interests of openness and transparency, I would like to admit to my readers that I am now a convicted felon. I’m not kidding. I was recently up before a magistrate at the High Court on a charge of dangerous driving. I pleaded guilty and was fined the sum of Sh. 11,000, with the […]

I have a lifelong love affair with Kenya’s coastline. Our great ocean exerts an irresistible romantic pull on me. No matter how many other great seas I visit, I invariably return to the warmest embrace of them all: the Indian Ocean. Much of the money I make in this life is spent sitting at the […]

Having given the matter sufficient thought, I now conclude that we need even more ministries than we think we do. That is my position and it will never change, not ever. It is clear from the justifications being bandied about for 40-odd ministries that whatever is important in Kenya must have a ministry in charge […]

It is utterly amazing that we were even discussing 44 cabinet positions. Not even a superpower needs that many ministers in government, let alone a tin-pot country like ours. What do all these ministries cost us to have? Quite a bit, by all accounts. There are around 16 ‘super-ministries’: those with huge staff complements; complex, […]

In 2005, I asked in this column whether the Kenyan National Examinations Council knew how to spell U-N-F-O-R-G-I-V-A-B-L-E. No-one took the hint. The Council was forgiven its sins, and it proceeded to keep on sinning. What happened in 2005? The students who were sitting the KCSE Mathematics paper that year were subjected to something unforgivable. […]

If you didn’t know where “Muthurwa” was in Nairobi, I guess you do now. Recent goings-on around that part of Eastlands have all of Nairobi in a spin – and a completely unnecessary one. First we had the fiasco of the new hawkers’ market. The people who perch on pavements and alleys in the city’s […]

Suddenly, the country was split asunder. Led by self-seeking politicians, the people of the land suddenly began viewing their neighbours with suspicion and mistrust. They had spent centuries together, and shared languages, songs, cuisines and even blood. But now, because a few people had said so, it was no longer possible to live together in […]

How things can change in a week. This week, it was a pleasure to watch the news on TV and read the papers. For there was scarcely an item of bad news coming out of Kenya – after two full months of doom scenarios. Kofi Annan’s expertly mediated accord has allowed this nation to emerge […]

I am writing this article in state of semi-euphoria, so you will forgive its breathless tone. It is Thursday night, and I have been witnessing something that seemed impossible at the beginning of the week: Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga sat down in front of the world’s cameras and signed a power-sharing deal. It is […]

We didn’t see it coming. That is the horrified standard response to our post-election crisis from our chattering classes (also known as the drinking classes, the pontificating classes, and the not-our-fault classes). This response is uttered in aghast fashion, and reflects the speaker’s disgust at these dreadful goings-on. This response allows many scapegoats to appear: […]

I listened to Amartya Sen lecturing many years ago, and knew I was in the presence of great wisdom. A decade later, he won the Nobel Prize for Economics. This Indian-born professor has also been the first non-white Master of Trinity College, Cambridge – a position that is regarded as the apogee of British academia. […]

In all the scenes of mayhem, chaos and looting we have observed over the past few weeks, one fact is inescapable. In virtually every case, the trouble-makers are young males. Older men, and women in general, have little interest in burning, harming, killing or general disorder. That is an affliction peculiar to the young male. […]

It is nearly five years since I started to write this column. And today, for the first time, I have nothing I want to write. Today, for the first time, I am staring at the blank white screen before me without anticipation, without ideas, without purpose. Indeed, an honest act would be to submit a […]

Our post-elections crisis has been characterised by many types of intolerance, many of which have resulted in mayhem. But one particular type of strange provincialism is happening all the time, and passing without comment: our peculiar loathing of the international media. Many respected Kenyans have hurled vitriol at the foreign press and electronic media in […]

A question: why are all those Kenyans in Diaspora not chasing each other with pangas? I’m being entirely serious. There are hundreds of thousands of Kenyans out there, in dozens of countries. They come from all tribes and all social classes. Some are very well educated, but many are not. They are not necessarily in […]

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy. Saint Francis of Assisi’s famous prayer is widely quoted and cherished. Its sentiment is […]

So many bad things have happened in Kenya over the past few days that we are numb with disbelief. But more than anything else, I am overcome by feelings of deep shame. Shame that my countrymen are capable of such inhuman and unconscionable acts against each other. And shame that people at the top of […]

The elections are done. It is now time to stop asking what your leaders can do for you, and start asking what you can do for yourself. For that is how development and progress actually happen: by one’s own efforts. But there is a very important step we must take before we rush to action. […]

All the hullabaloo is nearly over. It’s time for the day of reckoning on 27th December, in the only place that matters: the voting booth. The right to vote is the fundamental tenet of democracy. None of us should take it lightly. It is one of the most important powers granted to you by your […]

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for the elections to be done with. Regardless of who wins what, this campaign has not done the country any favours. We have all conducted ourselves very badly. Campaigns seem to bring out the worst in us. Who gains from elections? Certainly, the people who peddle […]

When I was a student in London, there was a particular Kenyan T-shirt that I would wear with great pride. It depicted a cartoon of a man pulling a ‘mkokoteni’ cart. This T-shirt reminded me of my roots, and of the idiosyncrasies of the country from which I had emerged. I told my fellow students […]

How long do family businesses last? Most make it to the second generation, and then the problems start. Once the visionary founder has handed over the reins to his son/daughter/nephew/brother, an inflection point occurs. What happens in that second generation decides whether the business has a future. Either the company makes necessary changes and undertakes […]

I have been fortunate enough in my life to have visited many of the world’s great cities. When I was younger, that was great fun. These days, I just get angry when I travel. Why angry? I get angry when the plane approaches a new city at night, and I can see a dramatic display […]

One man and a small child dead; another child in the intensive care unit. That was the net effect of last week’s Diwali celebrations in Nairobi. Diwali is the Hindu festival of light, and is meant to signify humanity’s evolution from darkness to light, from the forests to civilisation. An apt metaphor for where we […]