YOUR DREAM IS STILL VALID: From Johannesburg to Kampala via Nairobi

By Njonjo Mue

Worth Noting:

• On the evening of 12th October 2000 I sat pensively among some two thousand other worshipers at Rhema Bible Church listening to a sermon by American pastor TD Jakes, who was visiting our church that week. The sermon finally pushed me to take concrete steps to return home.
• Bishop Jakes preached from the book of Nehemiah, which opens with Nehemiah leaving his secure job in a foreign country to return home and lead the Jews in rebuilding the walls around Jerusalem.
• Later that night, when I arrived home from listening to Jakes’s sermon on Nehemiah, I wrote my letter of resignation from my job at ARTICLE 19 effective 22 December 2000.

During the years that I worked in South Africa with ARTICLE 19, I had the opportunity to visit Kenya several times for work or on holiday and I therefore also had the opportunity to contrast the two countries.

South Africa at the time was a new democracy governed by the African National Congress under the world’s most admired statesman, President Nelson Mandela, and his successor, the erudite African philosopher-king, Thabo Mbeki.

The multiparty system actually worked and there were vibrant debates in Parliament, the provincial assemblies, and in the media where differing points of view competed in the marketplace of ideas.

I greatly admired how South Africa’s new Constitution and its institutions worked to strengthen the young democracy.

The infrastructure, especially the road network, electric power supply, the telephone service and the Internet worked uninterrupted in support of the vibrant and growing economy.

[ I was not unaware that there were millions of black people who had been left out by the apartheid government and who did not yet enjoy the benefits of citizenship on an equal basis as the white citizens. However, the story of the apartheid system and its legacy belongs elsewhere in the book.]

Kenya on the other hand was just the opposite. The Moi and Kanu dictatorship continued to ride roughshod over the politics of the land, the economy was on its knees, corruption was at an all-time high, and everywhere you went, the infrastructure was collapsing with ubiquitous potholes on the roads, frequent power outages and rationing, and failing telephone services.

Every time I visited home, I left with a sense of guilt, wondering how I could be enjoying the fruits of other people’s blood, sweat and tears, while the situation back home in Kenya was only getting worse by the day.

I knew it was just a matter of time before I became completely unable to ignore the contradictions.

In early 2000, at the beginning of my third full year working in Johannesburg, a friend of mine lent me a small book titled ‘ Hope for Africa and What Christians Can Do ’ by University of Nairobi Professor George Kinoti.

The key argument of the book is that while peace, prosperity and human dignity are key prerequisites to building a prosperous and humane society, they do not come automatically. Society must devote itself to working to attain them.

Kinoti argues that Christians must not be content to pray for these prerequisites without doing more, but that they must join the rest of society in working to demolish the structures of injustice and build the ideal society.

Reading Kinoti’s book clarified to me what I had been struggling with for a number of months.

I had been writing prolifically and making speeches about the situation back home in Kenya, but Kinoti made it clear to me that the time for writing and talking (as well as just praying) was quickly coming to an end.

From the moment I finished reading his book, I became increasingly restless with the status quo comprising the comfortable life I was living in South Africa as contrasted with the seeming state of terminal social, political and economic decay in Kenya.

I shared my increasing discomfort with my girlfriend at the time, also a Kenyan working in South Africa. I told her that I did not see myself continuing working in South Africa after the end of that year.

Still, I continued carrying out my job without making a specific plan to return home.

On the evening of 12th October 2000 I sat pensively among some two thousand other worshipers at Rhema Bible Church listening to a sermon by American pastor TD Jakes, who was visiting our church that week. The sermon finally pushed me to take concrete steps to return home.

Bishop Jakes preached from the book of Nehemiah, which opens with Nehemiah leaving his secure job in a foreign country to return home and lead the Jews in rebuilding the walls around Jerusalem.

Later that night, when I arrived home from listening to Jakes’s sermon on Nehemiah, I wrote my letter of resignation from my job at ARTICLE 19 effective 22 December 2000.

I did not know what I would be going back home to Kenya to do, but the sermon helped to make it crystal clear in my mind that I needed to go back and join forces with those who were working for change on the ground.

This was particularly important as President Moi was serving his last term in accordance with the Constitutional term limits and I wanted to be a part of the transition.

Once I made up my mind that I was returning home, December could not come soon enough.

Eventually, the day did come and I caught my flight from Johannesburg Airport bound for JKIA in Nairobi.

During the Christmas break, I bumped into a number of friends in Nairobi who were unable to hide their surprise upon learning that I had resigned from a well paying international position in a comfortable country to return to the obvious mess that was Kenya at the time.

They would be flabbergasted to learn that I had done so without the promise of another job at home or elsewhere.

I spent a quiet Christmas break with family. Early in the New Year, I received two phone calls. One was from my friend John Githongo who at the time was the Country Director of Transparency International Kenya.

He had set up the Kenya Chapter of TI a few months earlier and it was still operating from his house in Westlands. He wanted me to help him set up a secretariat and hire staff for the organisation.

By the time I joined the cause, he and his most efficient personal assistant, Irene Maweu, had already identified suitable premises and bought basic furniture and equipment to get the office up and running.

I was then given the task of perusing two box files full of applications for a number of positions that John and Irene had advertised before I joined them.

At the end of that process, we had shortlisted a number of candidates and lined them up for interview for two positions, a programme officer and a finance manager.

The second call I received was from my former office at ARTICLE 19 in Johannesburg.

“We have some urgent work for you to help us with as a consultant,” my friend and former colleague Claudia got straight to the point from the other end of the line as soon as I had answered the call.

Claudia reminded me that the year that had just began, 2001, would mark ten years since the adoption in May 1991, of the Windhoek Declaration for a Free, Independent and Pluralistic Press at a UNESCO Seminar that had taken place in Windhoek, the capital city of Namibia.

To mark this milestone, UNESCO was planning to host another conference in Windhoek in May 2001, dubbed Windhoek + 10.

Claudia went on to explain that ARTICLE 19 had entered a partnership with two other regional organisations, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) and Southern African Communications for Development (SACOD) with a view to drafting another Declaration, this time one on broadcasting; and pushing for its adoption at the forthcoming UNESCO conference.

ARTICLE 19 needed me to lead that effort.

And so the first half of 2001 was spent helping John Githongo and Irene Maweu set up a secretariat for Transparency International and simultaneously putting together a small but committed tripartite army from ARTICLE 19, SACOD and MISA to draft the declaration on broadcasting and strategise on how to push it through a reluctant UNESCO to have it adopted by the participants at the Windhoek conference.

With regard to TI, as soon as it was up and running, my friend Githongo told me that he would need a deputy director and, given the good work we had done together, the job would be mine for the taking.  Unfortunately for reasons explained below, I was not able to take up his offer.

The Broadcasting Liberation Army

I convened a number of meetings in Johannesburg and Harare at which we drafted a Declaration on broadcasting.

My small army and I then flew to Windhoek a day ahead of the start of the conference which was scheduled to take place on 3 – 5 May 2001.

I convened the meeting to clean up and finalise our draft Declaration and, more importantly, to strategize on how we would push to get it adopted by the conference.

We had intelligence reports that UNESCO did not particularly like the idea of adopting another Declaration. But our argument was that since the 1991 Declaration was adopted the world had changed significantly especially in the field of broadcasting.

Due to the hostility we knew would await us at the conference, we called our small team of determined crusaders the Broadcasting Liberation Army or BLA.

We planned how we would spread ourselves in different parts of the plenary hall and when we were called upon to contribute to the debate on the last day of the conference when resolutions were being discussed and adopted, we would each bring up the need to adopt a Declaration on broadcasting.

In the end, we succeeded and the African Charter on Broadcasting was adopted on the last day of the conference.

The opportunity to shepherd the drafting and adoption of the African Charter on Broadcasting was a welcome one for me as it enabled me to end my sojourn in southern Africa on a high note.

On returning to Nairobi from Windhoek, I was prepared to take up John Githongo’s offer to join his team at TI.

However, the day after I arrived in Nairobi, I received a call from my friend Joseph Gitari asking for a meeting.

Gitari was a Programme Officer with Ford Foundation working at their East Africa office based at Upper Hill in Nairobi. He and I had first met and become friends when we negotiated funding for an ARTICLE 19 project drafting and lobbying for the adoption of the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa, which the African Commission on Human Rights was to eventually adopt in 2002.

Tall, dark, thin and bespectacled, Joseph Gitari could easily be mistaken for a twin brother of Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

Unlike Kagame, however, Gitari was a chain smoker and he had a cigarette lighter that chirped like a bird every time he lit up. He explained that it was a gift from his children so that he could be discouraged from lighting up too often especially in public places where people’s attention would be drawn to him every time he lit up a cigarette.

“I have a job for you,” Joe said shortly after we had sat down and ordered our drinks at the Aksum Bar inside the Serena Hotel in Nairobi.

He went on to explain that he had recently traveled to the head office of Ford Foundation in New York. On his way back, he had stopped over briefly in London to visit a grantee of Ford, an international NGO I had never heard of by the name of Panos Institute.

Panos worked around the world to ensure that information is effectively used to foster public debate, pluralism and democracy.

Based in London, the organization had recently opened a regional office for Eastern Africa based in Kampala.

“They are hiring a regional director and I told them that I know just the man for the job,” Gitari said. “They will be sending you the job advert through email. Look out for it and apply.”

I had returned to Kenya from South Africa to become part of the political change that was then underway as the country prepared for the exit of President Moi at the end of his second term in 2002.

But now here was a good friend offering me a new job that would make me leave the country once again. I was not keen on it, but I thought that, given our history, I should not let him down.

I would, therefore, apply for the job and go through the interview but I hoped that ultimately they would hire somebody else.

In mid-May, I flew to Kampala for the interview.

The panel comprised the executive director of Panos London, James Dean, and the Chairperson of the board of Panos Eastern Africa, Wafula Oguttu.

Dean was a tall, white Englishman who was prematurely balding while Oguttu appeared to be his direct opposite. A dark skinned stout Ugandan journalist with a head full of hair, he was the founder and publisher of The Monitor Newspaper, Uganda’s only independent paper at the time.

During the day that I spent in Kampala undergoing the job interview, I also met with Zawadi Kamango, a soft-spoken Kenyan journalist from the coast who loved to speak in Kiswahili and who had already assumed her position as the Deputy Director of the newly established regional office.

My hopes that the position would go to someone else were quickly dashed, for I did not even have to leave Kampala to await news of the outcome of the interview.

After being interrogated by the panel in the morning, I was invited to have lunch with the three of them at a nearby restaurant.

Before lunch was over, Oguttu had already informed me that they had decided to hire me.

“As you can see, the team is complete, only lacking a head,” he said. “We also have your nice car waiting for you,” he added with a cheeky smile referring to the new Toyota Surf that had been dispatched to pick me up from the airport the day before and from my hotel earlier that morning.

“Can you start next month?” he asked me, leaving me little room for maneuver. I answered in the affirmative and they promised to send me the contract for my consideration and eventual signature before the end of that week.

Although initially reluctant to leave Kenya for yet another foreign assignment so soon after I had returned, I took solace in the fact that my new country of abode was just next door and the fact that my regional director position covered the whole of East Africa and the Horn comprising eight countries including Kenya.

This meant that there would be many opportunities to visit my home country either for work or stopping by as I changed flights on my way to one of those other countries.

Before I departed for Kampala to begin my new job I had one more meeting with Gitari at the same venue we had met earlier.

This time, we were joined by Betty Maina who at the time was heading the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Earlier in the year 2000 IEA had partnered with the Society for International Development to publish a booklet titled ‘ Kenya at the Crossroads: Scenarios for our Future ,’ which described four possible futures Kenya could face over the next 10 to 15 years after the departure of Moi from office.

The scenarios project had been received with acclaim in policy circles when the booklet was published.  It had been funded by several donors, but Ford Foundation was now considering supporting similar projects in Uganda, Tanzania and the East African region as a whole.

Gitari recommended that Panos consider joining the partnership for the proposed country and regional scenario-building projects.

I agreed to join the partnership and we decided that the best entry point for Panos should be to conduct an evaluation of the concluded Kenya scenarios project as it would give us an inside understanding of how the project had been conceived and implemented and prepare us to play a more substantive role when the projects for the rest of the region were rolled out.

Your Dream Is Still Valid…

It was a quiet moonless night on Thursday 31 May 2001 as the last flight out of JKIA bound for Entebbe taxied slowly from the terminal building towards the runway preparing for take-off.

I had waited until the last possible moment to leave Nairobi for Kampala to start my new job.

An hour later, my flight landed at the main Ugandan airport in Entebbe and I made my way through immigration, picked up my bags from the carousel and walked briskly through the nearly deserted terminal building.

Once outside, I was received by Fred Mwesige the Panos driver, whom I had first met when he had picked me up when I arrived for the interview a fortnight earlier. Fred was a jovial young man of average height with a round boyish face.

“Welcome back sir,” he said with a broad smile that seemed to light up the still night air. He reached for both my bags but I only handed him one and continued to pull the other on its wheels behind me as we walked to the car park.

I was still struggling inwardly with the idea of leaving behind Kenya, with all the political action that was then getting underway, to take up this new job in Kampala and I was still wrestling inwardly about my predicament.

God seemed to understand my plight because, no sooner had we boarded the car and Fred started the engine, than the radio started to play ‘ Any Dream Will Do ,’ the theme song of the musical play ‘ Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dream Coat ’ by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The song is about Joseph, one of Jacob’s twelve sons in the Bible, who had a gift of interpreting dreams.

This gift, though after a long time of persecution and many twists and turns, eventually made way for him to be elevated to the second most powerful person in Egypt, a position that enabled him to save his entire family from famine.

Listening to this song as Fred drove me from Entebbe towards Kampala, I felt as though God was reassuring me that although I had come to sojourn in yet another foreign land, this was just a detour, similar to Joseph’s many detours that took him into a pit where he was thrown by his jealous brothers, from the pit to Potiphar’s house, from Potiphar’s house into the prison for a crime he did not commit, and finally from the prison to the palace.

In a similar way, I sensed God reassuring me that despite the various detours I was encountering along the way, he had neither forgotten me nor my dream to eventually work for lasting change in my home country of Kenya.

By the time I checked into the Imperial Hotel in Kampala, it was shortly before one o’clock in the morning.

I found my way to my room, got into bed, and tried to silence the sound of ‘ Any dream will do, ’ which was still softly playing in my mind’s ear,

” I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain

To see for certain what I thought I knew

Far far away, someone was weeping

But the world was sleeping

Any dream will do…. ”

As I drifted off to sleep, I knew for certain that though my heart was aching to  fight for those far, far away who were weeping, while the world was sleeping, the time would surely come for me to wipe away their tears.

Until then, I would make the best of this latest detour and enjoy making Kampala my new home.

(To be continued /… )

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About the Author

Njonjo Mue

Political Activist Lawyer Njonjo Mue

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