He was born into poverty, one of seven children. He agitated against the iniquities and elitism of his society from an early age, often violently. He eventually formed a political movement that focused exclusively on the problems of the poor, and it quickly gathered a large following. He was supported to the hilt by the poor in a landslide victory, leaving the political and business elite aghast, and the middle class deeply fearful.
Given the events we have all witnessed in Kenya over the past few days, you might be forgiven for assuming I was referring to one of the new breed of politicians who are marshalling huge support from Nairobi’s slum-dwellers and the rural poor and unseating big names in the recent primary elections.
But no, I was referring to Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela. After taking power in 1999, he has been re-elected several times with large majorities. His hold on the common person’s vote is unshakeable. It seems only ill-health will prevent him from being the leader of his country.
Please consider the country in which Chávez took power, the Venezuela of the 1990s. It was a country with rapidly spiralling poverty and inequality and growing insecurity. The rich of the land enjoyed an idyllic lifestyle; but the poor felt their lot worsen by the year. The conditions were ripe for the emergence of a populist leader.
In 2004, I wrote this about our own beloved nation on this page: that there are many places called “Kenya.” There is a Kenya in which rich folks take tea in five-star hotels and do their shopping in exclusive malls. There is also an altogether nastier Kenya in which people live on the edge of desperation from day to day, with no way out of the prison of poverty that holds them captive.
At that time, we had a huge opportunity. Our early “economic recovery strategy” emphasized slum upgrades, rural electrification, traders’ markets, rural access roads, health facilities and many more wise initiatives. Wise, because they were “pro-poor” in the right way. Wise, because focused on helping the poor not by giving them handouts, but by improving their access to economic opportunity.
Most of that was simply not done. It was replaced by “trickle-down” theories: the tired philosophy that suggests that you fix the problem of the poor by allowing the wealthy and investing classes to thrive, and in the process pass down the benefits by creating employment.
Last time I checked, formal employment remains stubbornly stuck around the two million mark. Meanwhile, informal employment soars every year. In other words, the poor are helping themselves.
We have had our successes, certainly: the world-beating success of our mobile connectivity and money transfer services, and bottom-of-the-pyramid banking, are indeed phenomenal. We have an emerging middle class, purchasing household items and better education for the first time. That is all good. But it isn’t enough.
It isn’t enough because we have ignored those slums and rural pockets of poverty. We have watched them become violence hotspots and the source of rampant insecurity, and we have kept looking away. We have imagined that something called “pro-business” is different from “pro-poor.”
As any enlightened business leader will tell you, the two go hand-in-hand. Every business needs growing average purchasing power, improving skills availability, and security of person and poverty. Property and stock-market booms do not address the central problem of the disenchanted poor.
So now, as we are seeing, the poor will choose their leaders, and their sheer numbers will propel those leaders into power. The rest of us may look on nervously, but the graffiti is on the wall. The days of genteel selections in quiet boardrooms are over.
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Just concluded nominations is a clear example old crop of leaders aren’t worth of thier posts and new faces more familiar with the poor & middle income earners though unfortunate some crawled thier way to posts of others, was an alarm to most that Kenyan’s are fed up with the ‘KAMA KAWAIDA’ policy of running business…….It’s not where one is born that matters but where they are headed to-in this case where/what they are willing to do for their counties. VOTE WISELY!!
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With our central bankers the world over, now believing in “learning by doing” as recently expressed by Fed Chairman Bernanke, I think it’s now safe to say that most of our corporate CEOs are “doing, but not learning” and our politicians, of course, not ones to be left behind, “are never learning and never doing.”
You’re right Sunny in dispelling the myth of wealth associated with rising property and stock market values, but I fear the problem is much worse. The new motto seems to be “who needs balanced budgets when you can get your debts monetized by the CBK and banking community.” This fiscal experiment in increased spending with no care for income will only end in tears. The ever increasing disparity between the rich and the poor appears to be not only the new normal, but rather a permanent feature of our economy.
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Just like a time bomb, the elite leaders in society who think they can wish away the under-previlaged in society have started waking up to a rude shock. A line from Bob Marley’s song goes “you can fool some people some time but you cant fool all the people every time!
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