•Saturday, May 20, 2006
there is this forward i have received several times in a span of less than two weeks from different people that made me ponder about some issues. forwards can be annoying at times especially if they promise a miracle after forwarding them to ten people or warns of dire consequences if you fail to forward them in the next five minutes. there are also those that require you to sign up at the end of the email to prove that there are more people who believe in god than the non-believers. worse still, are those that require you to scroll endlessly through a myriad of addresses and names only to find some smiley bunnies proclaiming love for you just in case you die before the sender affirms their emotional propositions to you. it could be the last time, the last goodbye they say. let us not ignore those that claim that you will get a check from microsoft or yahoo on sending the email to all the people in your address book including your boss! such easy cash at the click of a forward button makes people go ‘forward berserk’! imagine all that internet time and bandwidth lost and wasted in all that crap. that’s just a sample, there is more in forwards, spam and junk emails and all those phishing attempts from all those online predators. the global and in most instances employer cost is unimaginable. well i am no saint in this and have had my good forwarding moments. i do enjoy such on a foul day but i am more inclined to motivational and inspiring stuff. anything that infringes on my freedom of choice usually gets the ignore/delete button.
and now to the forward in the spotlight, i have reproduced it below unedited. it is from an unnamed mombasa activist calling for kenyans of good will to boycott delamere products. this is in a bid to take revenge on the delameres-the ones who had a pipeline from naivasha to nairobi to deliver lactose to milky-thirsty cityzens. i wonder how true this was. a great grandson of the delamere has decided that of late the shanty-dwelling folk make target practice good sport. the government and purported foreign masters have decided since last year’s similar shooting incident that it is not worth making the ever brown trouser clad, cold faced grandson account for shed blood. this year even the duke of kabeteshire, one sir charles njonjo has expressed concern that going by the public baying for deathmares blood, the grandson may not get a fair trial! i sympathise with the family of robert njoya, the latest victim of cholmoderey target practice. i have no doubt about njoya’s intention with the dead swala but the punishment meted was barbaric. last-year-felled-kws-ranger ole sisina’s family best feels the pain of injustice and having a bread winner prematurely exit the scene. such pain of lack of retribution! the law is truly the thickest ass there is!
a year or so ago, it was the delmonte empire that was facing similar futile calls for product boycott. apparently the security detail of the expansive thika fruit plantation were thrilled at the sight of hapless women and school kids fleeing from packs of marauding canines. [by the way how come pineapples are so expensive in thika compared to other places?] the beatings, sexual violation and maiming that such less-than-a-dollar a day suffered for trespassing and of course gathering a few 'kunis' and a fruit for dessert were best captured by citizen tv. citizen tv wins my gbh accolade for being the best gbh-uncensored station in kenya. i doubt any other would win the title after they showed the gory site of the army man whose head was skinned along thika road with no spurt of blood in sight, his body well placed in a bowly posture. the delmonte boycott call did not yield any fruit but the exposé made delmonte managers more humane, so i hear.
i doubt whether these latest calls in regard to delamere will amount to anything. if anything the many kenyans who rely financially on these enterprises will be greatly affected. all the same something needs to be done about the plight of squatters, the landless and the poor in our society. some form of kenyanization need to be done, redistribute the ownership of these farms without necessarily affecting the economic viability of the plantations, even if it calls for government buy-out. there have been successful stories in selling shares to farmers in sugar belt regions and tea growing areas to co-own the firms with the government and other interested investors (read the delameres and delmontes of this country). such expanse and opulent ownership of huge tracts of land to the detriment of greater kenyan good need to be addressed in favour of the greater number of kenyans suffering from landlessness and languishing in poverty.
here is the forward:
and now to the forward in the spotlight, i have reproduced it below unedited. it is from an unnamed mombasa activist calling for kenyans of good will to boycott delamere products. this is in a bid to take revenge on the delameres-the ones who had a pipeline from naivasha to nairobi to deliver lactose to milky-thirsty cityzens. i wonder how true this was. a great grandson of the delamere has decided that of late the shanty-dwelling folk make target practice good sport. the government and purported foreign masters have decided since last year’s similar shooting incident that it is not worth making the ever brown trouser clad, cold faced grandson account for shed blood. this year even the duke of kabeteshire, one sir charles njonjo has expressed concern that going by the public baying for deathmares blood, the grandson may not get a fair trial! i sympathise with the family of robert njoya, the latest victim of cholmoderey target practice. i have no doubt about njoya’s intention with the dead swala but the punishment meted was barbaric. last-year-felled-kws-ranger ole sisina’s family best feels the pain of injustice and having a bread winner prematurely exit the scene. such pain of lack of retribution! the law is truly the thickest ass there is!
a year or so ago, it was the delmonte empire that was facing similar futile calls for product boycott. apparently the security detail of the expansive thika fruit plantation were thrilled at the sight of hapless women and school kids fleeing from packs of marauding canines. [by the way how come pineapples are so expensive in thika compared to other places?] the beatings, sexual violation and maiming that such less-than-a-dollar a day suffered for trespassing and of course gathering a few 'kunis' and a fruit for dessert were best captured by citizen tv. citizen tv wins my gbh accolade for being the best gbh-uncensored station in kenya. i doubt any other would win the title after they showed the gory site of the army man whose head was skinned along thika road with no spurt of blood in sight, his body well placed in a bowly posture. the delmonte boycott call did not yield any fruit but the exposé made delmonte managers more humane, so i hear.
i doubt whether these latest calls in regard to delamere will amount to anything. if anything the many kenyans who rely financially on these enterprises will be greatly affected. all the same something needs to be done about the plight of squatters, the landless and the poor in our society. some form of kenyanization need to be done, redistribute the ownership of these farms without necessarily affecting the economic viability of the plantations, even if it calls for government buy-out. there have been successful stories in selling shares to farmers in sugar belt regions and tea growing areas to co-own the firms with the government and other interested investors (read the delameres and delmontes of this country). such expanse and opulent ownership of huge tracts of land to the detriment of greater kenyan good need to be addressed in favour of the greater number of kenyans suffering from landlessness and languishing in poverty.
here is the forward:
Hello,
I received this email form a friend asking me to ACT after what cholmondoreeee did to a kenyan last year,,,,how i acted you dont know... Seeing the papers with headlines.....''Oh no, not again'' disturbs me, it means i never acted enough...hence i have copied the same email to you to ACT lest you will be the next victim.......
Dear All,
Its is very disturbing to see the turn of events on the case involvingthe Delamere! I request we Kenyan of African origin to do the just to our brother,May his soul rest in peace, by shunning all the Delamere products in thesupermarkets, Kiosks and shops.It may sound absurd but may be a way to show the Delamere we are proudof ourselves and have unity in diversity and can simply do without them.Pass this on to other humble Kenyan who have made the Delamere rich bytaking Delamere products and not KCC, Brookside, Kilifi Gold and others hence making ourselves poorer andsubject to injustices.
I am angered by the Picture in the Standard Newspaper today of a helpless mother morning the death of a son by someone who has no regard for life of Africans, how long are we going to stomach such kind of uncouth behaviuor for such brutal colonialists in our own soil.SAY NO TO NEOCOLONIALISM SAY NO TO DELAMERE PRODUCTS, SAY NO TOSHOPPING AT THE DELAMERE ON YOUR WAY TO NAKURU,SAY NO TO INTIMIDATION.This man shoot at some Women because ''HE thought they were monkeys inhis Shamba''!!!! Up to when shall we be belittled in our own home. Nowonder MUGABE never gives a damn when it comes to the pride of his ownpeople!!
Circulate the Mail to as many Kenyans as u can!
Human Rights Activist.
Mombasa
Mombasa
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2 comments:
Hi. First of all it would be great if "human rights activist" signed their actual name. 2) over december i asked the owner of a kiosk why he continued to sell delamere products and he responded "i'm about business, not siasa". You see, boycotts will only work when we understand the extent to which we financially support people who continue to treat us badly. Lots of 'civic education' to be done before this happens. And while we're at it, why not extend this boycott to all products not produced in kenya by kenyans who are making positive contributions vs. reducing our population? why do we buy ceres, and juices packaged in oman and not our own stuff? why do we buy flowers from farms that are the equivalent of sweatshops? until we understand how this affects our lives directly, calls like these will not galvanize the critical mass needed to send a message to delamere and his ilk.
@rista
thanks for your well-thought out comment. i do agree that such uncoordinated calls cannot amount to much. we need stronger labour movements and civil societies that focus on the social problems of kenyan workers. currently they concentrate on political strife, while their input is greatly needed on issues of exploitation of workers by the delameres, flower farms, tea plantations, cattle ranches and delmontes.