We saw Julie Gichuru for instance, launching the “Who Owns Kenya” slot which glorified corporate thieves like Equity Bank’s Peter Munga, whom we have come to discover moonlights for property lodged at the Bank as collateral, by using uncouth tactics to acquire it like dispatching auctioneers and bribing judges so as to get favourable court-rulings in his greedy pursuit of property. Case in point being the Pioneer School in Maragua which was initially owned by a client that innocently sought for a loan at Equity Bank.
CAPTION: Julie Gichuru’s shows became a platform to reinforce constructs of the corporate class. Her desperation to align with, and eventually join the corporate world through her husband’s betting company was evident with each interview. The advent of social media platform Twitter which basically acts as a content aggregator was initially skewed in the country as only the mainstream media-linked individuals dominated it, to sway public opinion. From the business front, we had individuals like AlyKhan Satchu who formed “Twitter-Cliques” with the likes of a Jazz loving/wife snatching-wanker, GinaDin Kariuki, Kenya Redcross CEO Abbas Gullet, Jeff Koinange, Julie Gichuru, and others, with new users would be desperate to align with. It was mandatory for everyone to say a “good morning” to that clique everyday.
With that prominence, that clique was able to perpetrate the biggest “social media heist” of our time, when in 2011, they launched and drove two campaigns dubbed “Kenyans for Kenya” and “Bring Zack Back” basically asking Kenyans to contribute their hard-earned money, and contribute money as Government officials stole our taxes that were meant to meet the same objectives.
Millions of funds were raised that today remain unaccounted for, and the purported hospital to be built under the auspices of “Bring Zack Back” has never seen the light of day.Using social-media and their mainstream media influence, the individuals used a psychological tactic to invoke fear, and crowd-source emotions, baiting the public using images of hunger-stricken citizens in Turkana or a disabled Zack. Musician Wahu Kagwi, the talentless trophy wife to Nameless who still appears on magazine covers and media interviews despite the obvious fact that she has never released an album 15 years after her debut, was also used to trigger false emotions, by being paid to shed fake tears at a Kenyans For Kenya event held at Laico Regency Hotel in October 2011.
So impostors masquerading as journalists, purporting to trade-off their media visibility, converging mainstream/social media presence, whilst purporting to execute their normal functions as journalists, but in essence tainting the environment with inferior marketing techniques, that contravene all known written journalistic ethics and codes. These are not journalists but latter day-extortionists.But two business journalists who can single-handedly take credit for the corporate malaise in the country have got to be Terryanne Chebet of Citizen TV and Wallace Kantai of Nation Media Group.
Nearly all corrupt CEO that have overseen the collapse of companies they headed, for instance Titus Naikuni former Kenya Airways CEO and current CEO Mbuvi Ngunze, Jonathan Ciano of Uchumi, Evans Kidero the ODM thief-cum-Governor of Nairobi and the likes, have received favourable coverage provided by these two “dominant” players in the business news information dissemination category.
They have been (mis)used by company-heads who want to mislead both Government and their shareholders in-order to manipulate stock prices or solicit for extra capital.
In the same light, Wall Street banks and their global brethren have been under the largest investigations and their scrutiny for criminal rigging of markets to occur this century. The US Senate investigations of the early 1930s when crooked business journalists touting fraudulent Wall Street stocks and crooked Wall Street bank executives manipulating stock prices were regularly revealed through subpoenaed documents, meaning that the practice has been rife, and isn’t something new.
Take real-estate in Kenya for instance. The price of land and property in Kenya has been abnormal over the last ten years, beating premier hubs like South Africa, which have better roads, subways, security and amenities than this shit-hole called Kenya, which is now a heaven for corruption, poor infrastructure, bad healthcare, industrial action, extra-judicial murders and forced disappearances perpetrated from the top echelons of Government. So why does land and property cost so much in Kenya, a shit-hole compare to South Africa which resembles Europe on every front?
CAPTION: Why is real-estate in Sancton South Africa (pictured) cheaper than the shit-hole that is Kenya, with poor roads, no lighting, bad security and no amenities? It’s simple; there is a lot of dirty money influx from neighbouring war-torn countries like Somalia and South Sudan. There is also money acquired through corruption locally, for instance the Kshs. 200 Billion Eurobond money stolen by Uhuru and Ruto or the money Cabinet Secretaries, Governors and Corporate thieves like Peter Munga and James Mwangi are laundering. This is money which is meant to build your public amenities like roads, subways, hospitals, schools, stadiums, parks, airports, police-houses and the likes, but is instead diverted to people’s accounts.
Using real-estate companies like Hass Consult, Knight Frank, Lloyd Masila and Cytonn Investments, corrupt money launderers have found a perfect vehicle to hide their ill-gotten wealth whilst turning it into equity. The real-estate companies then bribe mainstream media journalists like Terryanne Chebet, Wallace Kantai, Business Daily’s Brian Wasuna and the likes, to run doctored analysis of the Housing/Real-Estate Sector, creating generic-hype and basing it’s prospects on false reporting, using illicit cash inflows as the sole indicator.
In the same light, road agencies like Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA) collude with land owners and the same real-estate firms which manage property in select areas which are hyped to manipulate value, in-order to concentrate road projects in those areas. Which would explain why areas like Nyeri, Rosslyn, Gigiri have good roads, and constantly being recarpeted, while just next door, Gachie, Ruaka and the likes have deplorable infrastructure. Our taxes are being used to make the lives of the rich more comfortable, yet the same retarded politicians stoke ethnic tensions, yet there are only two tribes in Kenya, the haves and the have-nots.
The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) then goes ahead to bribe business journalists to fear-monger on new initiatives meant to raise extra revenue to continue funding the corruption, wastage and opulence of the executive, by threatening to tax MPESA balances, and Uber taxi’s, yet all the corrupt money running into billions is being hidden in the real-estate sectors which goes unpolished and unregulated. MPigs in their little wisdom and greed would only think of creating another parastatal by legislation that will only entrench corruption, rather than fix it.
In this wide matrix, the only common denominators are business journalists, who are bribed to misinform, never mind the obvious fact that they too are victims of the excesses of a Governance structure which is imbalanced and skewed to favour a minority elite, who continue to influence key Government agencies like KURA, where it’s directors and engineers are Bribed to concentrate projects in regions inhabited by the elite.
The farcical Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission plus other law enforcement agencies continue to turn a blind eye on this obvious discrepancy, never mind the fact that most will retire to their rural areas where no roads have been allocated, while they could have arrested KURA directors and engineers who continue to collude with land owners and developers in select areas of the country, so as to concentrate resources there, instead of spreading roads equitably.
The same journalists who are bribed to run rigged real-estate prospectuses, live in rented houses, and have to bear the brunt of poor infrastructure like the rest of the Kenyans whom they defraud by error of omission, leading one to wonder why the continue to engage in such fraudulent activities. Instead of calling for the arrest of KURA directors and engineers for conspiring with real-estate agencies and landowners for conspiring to concentrate development projects in select areas occupied by wealthy elites, journalists are comfortable living in shit-holes like Ruaka, Banana, Kinoo, Syokimau, Tena, Donholm, Komarock, and the likes, with poor roads, non-existent drainage and health-hazards for their children like leaking sewers.
A Renaissance in the country will only be achieved if we reduce our dependence on content from mainstream media journalists, who only work to serve vested interests. What they do is a crime that deserves the death penalty, and it’s a pity that universities like Daystar continue referring to themselves as institutions of higher learning, while still dispensing sub-standard graduates. A bigger catastrophe is employers especially those in creative/intellectual industries, insisting on university education as the main criteria of admission, while the calibre of graduates being churned out from most of these institutions are basically a crisis waiting to happen.