Sisyphus’ Task: The Battle for the Soul of the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation

By Waithaka Waihenya

The Kenya Broadcasting Corporation has been an enigmatic media House. Broadcasting House, as its headquarters is known has been the spawning ground for many journalistic careers and has remained one of the most enduring emblems of journalism to date. Standing on the steps of this House, Waithaka Waihenya sets out to explore the history of this giant media house, beloved by many but also loathed and detested by many. Tracing its origins from the colonial times, the author navigates through the eddies and currents and the whirligig of time and motion that have seen this giant media house move from one crisis to another and which has, for the most part, managed to overcome its challenges to confound both friend and foe.

Waihenya invites us to see the corporation in a new way. Rather than writing it off or condemning it as an institution that has outlived its purpose, the KBC should be seen as an institution that is part and parcel of our culture but which is sorely in need of government support and public appreciation. Sisyphus Task tells the story of an institution which presents peculiar challenges to all those who are mandated with the task of running it but whose obituary is not about to be written yet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Focus Publishers
• Release date: May 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393724445

Waithaka Waihenya

Waithaka Waihenya is an award-winning journalist who has extensive experience and knowledge in the print and broadcasting media in a stellar career that has seen him work at senior positions across both the private and public sectors. He started his career with The Standard Group rising to the position of Associate Editor. In 2003 he won the Journalist of the Year Award. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation for three and a half years and later became the Managing Director of the Corporation, a post he held for seven years. Waihenya was educated at Kenyatta University where he earned his degree in English and Literature. He obtained his Master’s degree in Communication from the University of Leicester in the UK. He has authored a number of books and his most recent are Dancing in The Twilight, Essays in Mortality Love, and self. One of his novels, The Vendor was shortlisted for the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature.

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Acknowledgements

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I am greatly indebted to the following people who, in one way or the other, contributed greatly in the writing of this book. Their contribution may have been in way of encouragement, critique or honest feedback that served to make this book better than it would have been.

To this end I am forever grateful to my professor at the University of Leicester in the UK, Eileen Shepherd, who guided me in my Masters programme, supervised my dissertation and encouraged me to broaden it further into a book.

Sally-Ann Wilson the Secretary General of Commonwealth Broadcasters Association encouraged me greatly in my discussions and research on the role of public broadcasters in Africa.

The former Minister for Information and Communication, Mr Raphael Tuju spent lengthy periods with me trying to make me understand how Kenya Broadcasting Corporation was like when he was appointed Minister under whose docket it would be in 2003. Similarly, Honourable Mutahi Kagwe who was also to become Tuju’s successor in that docket provided useful insights into the workings of KBC and the government’s overall idea of how a public broadcaster should be like.

The former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communication, Dr Bitange Ndemo with whom I worked when serving as both the Editor-in-Chief and Managing Director of KBC was particularly helpful in the course of writing this book. 

Also helpful was Wachira Waruru who was the first competitively recruited managing director of the corporation and who instituted reforms that eventually saw him being bundled out of the corporation. His predecessor, Mr Philip Okundi had also been instrumental in trying to reform KBC at a time when the government was not sincere in carrying out genuine and helpful reforms at the corporation. He too graciously gave me valuable insight into the workings of KBC during President Daniel Arap Moi’s era. Also, immensely helpful was Mr Hiram Mucheke who was the editor in chief of the corporation when the Narc regime of Mwai Kibaki came to power and who, with his boss, Waruru, had to exit the corporation when they fell out with the government.

I am also grateful to the former Television Programmes Manager of the corporation Ms Monika Wacheke Ndungu and her successor Rachael Nakitare who shared their experiences with me at the corporation. The former Chief Executive Officer of the Media Council of Kenya Dr Harun Mwangi, and the staff of KBC were also commendably helpful in assisting me in collecting and collating information about public broadcasting.

There are many others who contributed in many ways and assisted in the writing of this book. I may not be able to mention all their names but their help has not gone unacknowledged. Finally, I would like to thank Hivos who graciously funded the publication of the book and the Focus Publishers who agreed to publish it.

Forward

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On February 11, 1990, as the world media went into a frenzied rush to report on one of the epochs of the 20th century — the release of Nelson Mandela—the national broadcaster, Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC), responded with calm indifference. Its headline news for the evening, as had happened over the past decade, recapped former President Daniel arap Moi’s humdrum routines.

On the night in question, the KBC’s lead was Moi’s church attendance, accompanied by a coterie of his Cabinet. The church report dragged on, highlighting other Government functionaries who made it for the service. It was a full ten minutes before the bulletin got on to Mandela’s story—and his first images in 27 years...

This was the absurdity that defined news gathering and broadcasting at the KBC for most of its lifetime, more so in the 40 years under independence party, Kanu, when the Presidential Press Unit delivered ready-to-air content, complete with a running order, consigning editors to nothing more than autocue operators. Some of the shenanigans that played out in the KBC studios are well documented in this book, so we shall refrain from further commentary.

But that was only one side of the story. Besides serving as a core tenet of State propaganda, the KBC’s radio services transmitting in English, Kiswahili, and other indigenous languages, became cultural phenomena adored by the masses who relied on them for virtually everything; from the simple task of keeping track of the time—what with memorable jingos that announced news time with pomp—to connecting friends and family through their popular salaams programmes. The refrain, KBC ni nusu ya kuonana, encapsulated the depth of this audience engagement.

But things changed suddenly and spectacularly in early 1990s. The Berlin Wall tumbled down in November 1990, signalling the end of the Cold War, its reverberations echoing to the shores of East Africa. Despotic regimes that had been propped up by Western powers for strategic interests were suddenly on their own. The tide of change reached Nairobi in December 1991 with the restoration of multi-party politics, after a decade of one-party autocracy.

A fractious opposition unsuccessfully tried to rout Kanu out of power in 1992 and again in 1997. In tandem with the expanding political space came the media liberalisation, which kicked off in earnest in 1999 and climaxed in 2002, when an amalgam of former political rivals joined hands to deliver a decisive victory for the opposition.

This in turn precipitated further changes at the KBC, where top journalists were recruited from the vibrant private sector media, subverting a long-established tradition of awarding its top management positions to political cronies. Author Waithaka Waihenya was among this crop of professionals who reported to the Broadcasting House as Editor-in-Chief, alongside his former colleague at The Standard, Wachira Waruru, who was appointed the Managing Director. Waithaka succeeded David Waweru, who had also come from the private sector media and who had succeeded Waruru. He was to discharge these duties as Editor-in-Chief and later, Managing Director, for more than a decade.

In these pages, Waithaka narrates the gargantuan task that he and his team faced, rehabilitating a 20th century colonial construct into an efficient, effective state public broadcaster to compete with the burgeoning private-sector media. And while still at it, navigate the bureaucratic hoops inherited from our colonial forebears and the strictures imposed by Kenyan politicos. These transitions were foregrounded by technological disruptions that introduced seamless, digital broadcasting, erasing terrestrial advantage that the KBC had enjoyed for decades.

It is this compendium of complexities that the author seeks to explain, not just as a passive witness to history, but his own role as an insider and instigator of change. Waithaka goes further than that: he interviews his predecessors for a deeper understanding of the larger context of their Sisyphean task, to echo the title of the book. As a student of philosophy— there are echoes of Greek mythologies at every turn of the page —Waithaka contemplates this conundrum by posing deep, interesting questions. Of course, no one really knows how future technological shifts will reshape the way we gather and disseminate information, but his questions will provoke interesting responses.

As the thorough, analytical writer that he is, Waithaka casts a wide glance at other business models that have worked—or continue to work—such as the BBC World Service, or parallel outfits like the South African Broadcasting Corporation that has been working, but is now starting to falter. He concludes that nothing short of a reconfiguration of the KBC, from its funding structures to broadcasting remits will be needed to give it a fighting chance. The world media is at such a crossroads that no answer will hold true, not for long, anyway, so Waithaka’s contemplations are both insightful and useful in framing our vision of the future.

The scope of Waithaka’s inquiry was framed by a structured graduate programme in Britain, which implicitly imposed certain strictures on his study. While his comparative study of public broadcasting in Britain and South Africa was very appropriate, the political freedoms that obtain in those countries are not manifest in Kenya. Neither do the funding structures in those jurisdictions mirror Kenya’s situation. It might seem churlish to excoriate such research choices, though they reinforce a more significant observation, not just about the faltering fortunes of the KBC, but Kenya’s media sector at large.

If there is any lesson we can draw from the history and evolution of the KBC, its cardinal failure was in failing to cultivate a media culture with a distinct Kenyan genealogy. Instead, it replicated models from colonial masters and other similar jurisdictions. Similar failures are manifest in the Fleet Street model that was adopted by the local press. Unsurprisingly, the challenges that assail the Fleet Street model are being experienced locally, although very different conditions obtain here.

That’s an appropriate point of departure for, as one sage prophesied, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. There is a rich history that Waithaka documents in this book and, hopefully, Kenyans will pick useful lessons from it. One contradiction that stands out, and which the author superintended over, is the emergence of China as an imperial power in Kenya’s broadcasting. While its transmission of news from Beijing on the KBC at prime time could be construed as act of insertion, licensing a Chinese firm to provide an infrastructure for digital TV content transmission across Kenya is a serious act of assertion.

Thankfully, Waithaka was there to witness it all, and he provides useful insights into that as well. Put simply, there are many tales to tell in this book, and its subtitle, the battle for the soul of Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, is a fair summation of its content. Like a good surgeon, Waithaka cuts with clinical precision to get to the heart of the matter.

He explains why the KBC, like a sedated patient, has had an irregular heartbeat for decades and the interventions needed for its future survival. I congratulate him for undertaking this Sisyphean task, no pun intended, with great enthusiasm and foresight, as only Waithaka can.

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Dr Peter Kimani

Graduate School of Media and Communications

The Aga Khan University

Introduction

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Even for those who have cultivated a deep-seated disdain for the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, there is always a begrudging respect for the institution. This is mainly grounded in the fact that the institution is at the heart of Kenya, is Kenyan and it represents an integral part of the country’s history. The mutation from what used to be called the Voice of Kenya to the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation has not erased the special place the institution occupies in the hearts of all those who grew up at a time when the only radio and TV was the state broadcaster and those who, even though they have grown in the era of the liberalisation of the airwaves, and who may not even listen to the corporation’s radios or watch its television channels, have already heard quite a bit about the institution from their elders.

For this particular generation, KBC represents a study in the history of media and a constant marvel on how far the country has come in the area of broadcasting. When they trace the history of the country’s broadcasting industry, they find it incomprehensible that there was a time when the only broadcaster in the country used to start roadcasting at 4.30 am and go to bed with the rest of Kenyans at 11 o’clock. The rest of the hours the national television lay supine, silently and latently imbibing the news and programmes that it would later in the evening unleash to a public that had no other choice than to monomaniacally switch to it.

Then, every signature tune for every programme embedded itself in the minds of the listeners with a stubbornness that refused to go away for years. As I write this, there are programmes on KBC radio that are still running today, complete with the characteristics they used to have forty years ago and which still retain the freshness and appeal they used to have decades ago.

Programmes like Sundowner and Late Date are as old as the station. They still have their own fanatical following, underlining in more ways than one the special place that the corporation’s appeal has on a good segment of the Kenyan populace. Bubbling on the imperative of nostalgia, the programmes have weathered the storms of change to remain ever more appealing to a cross section of Kenyans. It is this aspect of the institution, which, though it may seem to represent the numb changelessness of an old institution, that sums up the historical significance of the corporation.

Yet, the ferocious whirligig of time has not done this national institution much good. Those who knew it as the Voice of Kenya literally are now an aging population. The young generation, born after 1992 when the airwaves in Kenya were liberalised and when new, more modern and versatile radio and TV stations came up, have scattered and sporadic recollection of KBC as the erstwhile lone broadcaster, and they may not, were it not for the fact that they cannot be immunised against the germs of the history the institution represents, really care about the place it should occupy in the integument of national life.

Their era has been defined by a pop culture that has shown scant mercy for things public or national in outlook. In the fast food business of new TV and radio programming, the national broadcaster is viewed by this generation as an aging, crippled auntie whose presence most people, including they, feel but for which they have no filial affection.  KBC has become to them like a good, favourite auntie whom everyone Sisyphus’ Task loves but who is always ignored and abandoned but to whose funeral everyone would feel obligated to attend.

The national broadcaster has found itself irresolutely standing between the Scylla of expediency and the Charybdis of necessity. Faced with the need to have its message seen and heard by the populace, the government has often relied on KBC, an expedient ally in the face of a hostile private media. But often, itching to put its message across to a younger population, the government has found itself having to rely on the more swift-of-foot private media which, in most cases, may not be very receptive or welcoming of the government’s message.

At such time the government realises, in a most poignant way, that the one institution it should have wholly relied on was mainly a cripple that has continued to hobble along,