It has been evident
throughout generations all across the world that politics makes little sense.
You would equally be losing a lot of sleep and much needed brain cells trying
to make sense out of an institution that makes no sense. I have since learnt to
consider political players as overpaid comedians who chose fancy titles to
accompany their names and the secret to survival in these murky waters is how
fast you can apply abrakadabra. Before I start creating the illusion
that I am much smarter than I look, let me get to the point. Uhm, before I get
to the point, I would like us to drive this hashtag #SomeoneTellKellysMum to
the top ten trending topics in Kenya this week. I will tell you why shortly.
Before I tell you why
we need to make #SomeoneTellKellysMum trend, I will tell you a brief story of
an experience I had with my father many years ago when I was a teenager trying
to help in the family business as I awaited to join college. I’m not on a
mission to complicate these issues and bore you to death so try stay with me
please and I will knit all these lose ends I am introducing together to an
amicable conclusion...
The reason why I want
to share the brief experience I had with my father as a teenager was inspired
by a twitter exchange that happened on Sunday between an honourable SORK and a
tweep named Kelly. Ok SORK is borrowed from the same line as POTUS i.e Senator
Of the Republic of Kenya. Here is an excerpt of the tweeversation:
The honourable SORK
was making a very serious contribution to the dilemma of how Kenyans can
reclaim looted public property then the young Kelly chap interjects with a
query of his own. Kenyans went ham about it and there were a million plus
change interpretations to this little exchange between SORK and lil Kelly. Here
is my take on the whole saga and I will relate it to a similar one I had with
my dad those many years back.
You see, my dad used
to be a land broker (let’s use the word real estate agent. Sounds more legit).
A real estate agent identifies land that needs to be sold and finds a buyer for
it or vice versa. The real estate agent adds a mark up to the price
of the land to act as his commission. If say you want to sale your ka plot for
Ksh. 1Million, a real estate agent will look for a buyer who is
willing to buy it for Ksh. 1.43Million. If he is lucky, he can even get one who
is willing to pay Ksh. 1.5M or Ksh1.7M or even 2 MILLION! After all, the
business of land is purely a willing buyer-willing seller affair. Donge?
So when my father finds a buyer willing to pay say Ksh. 1.7M, he will not go to
the seller and tell him I have found a buyer willing to pay you Ksh. 1.7M. He
will just tell him I have found a buyer. Infact if it was his friend Kariuki
who had found this buyer willing to pay Ksh. 1.7M, Kariuki would go
to the seller and say that he has found a serious buyer. Kariuki unlike my dad
will not stop there, he will tell the seller that the buyer is only willing to
offer Ksh. 900,000. You see, Kariuki has been in this land business for long
and he knows how to drive a hard bargain. He knows when it is the buyer or the
seller who is held between a rock and a hard place. He knows at the end of the
day that other than the Ksh. 700,000 he has managed to broker from the buyer,
he will also need the Ksh. 100,000 spill off from the seller to go buy for
himself and his lady friends first generation brew.
Since this story was
not about the tyranny of numbers nor Kariuki and neither was it about my dad
and how they connect willing buyers and willing sellers, I will summarize it
thus. In such deals, the real estate agent’s prowess lies in not allowing the
willing buyer to meet the willing seller because they will talk and realize
they are being swindled WILLINGLY. If you were to ask me, there is nothing
real about the real estate business, but what do I know?...
So there is this time
that my dad had helped a buyer get a prime piece of land and he had made some
good money. This money was god sent since my dad had gone for long without
having brokered any land and his loans were in arrears and he was heavily in
debt. Since it was family business, I was in charge of accounts. While in the
process of balancing the accounts, I realized I could not locate the huge
commission my dad had made from the prime land deal so I walked to where he was
enjoying second generation brew with his friends. To my shock, I found them
taking first generation brew but then I thought, maybe it was because he had
made a really good commission like Kariuki. Since in those days the Mututho
laws were still new and everyone was eager to implement them, I could not walk
into the bar as a teenager so I shouted to him from the doorsteps,
“ Dad, where is the
money of the sold Tuskis Embakasi?”
At that time, dad was
in the middle of a very heated debate and even without looking my way, he
shouted back,
“In your mother’s
account.”
He immediately went
back to his heated conversation and I went and asked mother for her bank
statement so that I could continue with the family business accounts audit.
Clever dad, he had deposit the lump sum in my mother’s account to prevent the
banks from recovering their arrears which could have wiped out his whole honey
pot...
So when lil Kelly and
the honourable SORK had a similar exchange, it took me back to the similar
exchange I had with my dad and I could not understand why KOT went ham over
such a small matter. I think the questions that we could have asked were
simple:
1. Was the Tokyo Embassy
land floated for sale by a willing seller?
2. Was a willing buyer
identified?
3. Did the willing buyer
accept the quote he got from the real estate agents?
Since there is a
pending case in court concerning the said prime land, it seems there was a
problem between the willing seller, willing buyer and the real estate agents.
We are a country that is governed by the rule of law and our court system is
evidence based (there I go again trying to seem smarter than I look). The
follow up questions from the tweet exchange begs thus:
1. Is lil Kelly and the
SORK related?
2. Was lil Kelly just
like me those many years ago trying to do some family audit and wanted to know
where the commission had been deposited?
3. Have the courts acted
on the new evidence and asked for audited accounts of lil Kelly’s mum?
Just like lil’ me
those many years ago when I could have called my dad aside and inquired about
family matters privately, lil Kelly might have wanted to ask the SORK about the
money maybe in an SMS but since he is hooked to twitter, he mistakenly asked
the question in the open when the SORK was in a deep deep conversation of great
national importance. But what do I know? I’ve been told before that I tend to
think too much. Or maybe I just tend to think too little. I’m yet to figure out
which is which but in the interest of the willing buyer who thinks he got a raw
deal in the Tokyo Embassy land purchase, why can’t KOT help and have
#SomeoneTellKellysMum to produce her audited accounts and prove whether the
commission from the sale was deposited there or not?
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