Nairobi — Living in Kirinyaga district is akin to being asked to make an impossible choice. You are either with the Mungiki or against them. There is no in-between.

A preliminary report by the Kenya Human Rights Commission says the outlawed Mungiki sector requires residents to pay monthly protection fees, graduated according to the standard of one's house - Sh500 for a permanent stone house and Sh400 for a semi-permanent one.

Those who run kiosks must pay between Sh50 and Sh100 every month, depending on the size of the business. If you keep dairy cows, you owe Sh20 every day - or Sh600 a month.

In short, if you live in a permanent house, keep a dairy cow and have a milk kiosk at your gate, you owe Sh1,200 every month - or Sh14,400 a year.

Should you get into a dispute, the Mungiki usually arbitrate, at a fee. They also collect debts and charge a percentage on the principal sum, levy tolls on matatus and a flat 5 per cent on all dowries. They reportedly work closely with police officers stationed in the area, paying junior and senior officers alike.

Those who join the Mungiki cannot leave and live. Those marked for death are beheaded. As a counter to the Mungiki terror, local vigilante groups have sprung up in the tradition of self-help. These groups reportedly enjoy wide community support.

One shows their commitment to the vigilante, who operate openly, through materials. You can give a panga, an axe or a club as you contribution to killing members of the Mungiki.

Those who are in business also fund the vigilante so that they can wipe out the Mungiki. Since the Mungiki are reputed for snorting snuff, the vigilantes have a foolproof test for smoking them out.

They stop young people at random and order them to sneeze. Should the mucus turn to be brown or black, one is taken to a place called "The Hague". It is a kangaroo court in the bush that does not do the International Criminal Court's reputation any good.

The choices are two - hang yourself or be cut down by machetes. The vigilantes are also becoming sophisticated in their hunt for Mungiki. They could undress you to check if you are wearing a certain type of underwear.

If you wear shorts under your trousers, you are guilty. If you have tobacco stains on your nails or teeth, you are also guilty. If you do not have these signs, then you must join the vigilante - by force. In this district, either you are with the Mungiki or you are with the vigilante. It is a situation the police are reportedly reluctant to arbitrate in.

Both are murderous gangs - so the only real choice is which one is less objectionable. As beneficiaries of the extortion money Mungiki collects, they would not want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg, so to speak. It is suspected that some of the officers are members of the Mungiki.

Yet, to appear neutral, they also receive money from those who fund the vigilantes. Police enjoy such little trust in the local population that they hardly receive reports of what is going on. This has always sounded like a Central Province problem, but there is nothing to stop it playing out in Coast Province, Rift Valley or any other area of Kenya.

So when the Minister for Internal Security and Provincial Administration visited the area this week, my expectation was that he would have some concrete plans to of taking away the impossible options residents have been given. Nothing of the sort was forthcoming.

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Degrees and other myths

With deep apologies to the visually challenged, I shall repeat the saying that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Degrees are greatly valued in our society because they are a measure of achievement. Usually, they denote nothing more than acknowledgement of spending time and money to acquire an education.

Current proposals to legislate the size of the Cabinet appear sensible and welcome. Unfortunately, they all appear misplaced and designed for a country other than Kenya.

Our recent history and experiences bear me out. Just over a year ago, President Kibaki could not agree to a 24-member Cabinet because it would have meant asking some serving ministers to accept a demotion. Three years before that, he had been forced by the toughest negotiator this side of Africa to create more Cabinet jobs in the wake of the humiliating referendum result.

Two years before that, the President had been forced to swell the ranks of his Cabinet to 34 to gain room to manage the garrulous Liberal Democratic Party.

Cabinet has been an important carrot for managing the country's politics. Unless the drafters the Bill on the Cabinet exercise the muscles between their ears a little more, theirs will remain a simplistic solution to a complex problem. Worse, there are some populist proposals in the Bill that are neither tested nor proven.

The requirement that those who served in the Cabinet must have a degree is not based on any evidence that people with such qualifications think better, faster or act more honestly.

This view is informed by two very personal and narrow experiences. All the public universities in Kenya have been run by holders of doctoral degrees - no less. Many of them cannot compete on the national stage, let alone the international one.

This country is littered with sad narratives of educated men and women who sold out on public interest in the pursuit of personal wellbeing, tribal jingoism and narrow political interests.

Former President Daniel arap Moi never stepped into anybody's university class, yet he built more schools and universities than any educated person in this country.

The second personal example regards two men -- one dead and the other alive. Geoffrey Griffin, who was my headmaster for six years and father figure for life, dropped out of high school to join the military. He set up a Starehe Boys Centre, which will be celebrating its golden jubilee next month.

At Starehe, the late Geoffrey Geturo and Joseph Gikubu assisted him. Mr Gikubu was too busy doing Mau Mau staff to go to school. Yet between them, they ran a model international school renowned for excellence and character building - without a single degree between them. Griffin was also the founding director of the National Youth Service, an institution he served for 25 years. Did he need a degree to serve his country? No. Did he do well at his tasks? You be the jury.

Demanding a degree as a leadership qualification might be no better than insisting that only people who measure six-foot in height can be military commanders.

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Any MP want to pay tax?

For a while there, Kenya seemed to be on the cusp of a revolution, and the things that would drive us there were two: the price of maize meal and the vexatious issue of Members of Parliament paying taxes.

Two weeks after Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta put a full stop to his Budget Speech without a single mention of these two items has not touched off public demonstrations, loud exhortations on morning radio and a general call to rebellion. In fact, no one has spoken about taxing MPs and constitutional office holders, yet the matter that had become the traditional highlight of successive budget speeches.

All the high-ranking party factotums who said they would negotiate how to tax the allowances of MPs are mum. And the retired judge tasked with collecting already known public views on the matter of MPs' remuneration is yet to hand in his report.

The President and the Prime Minister, who reportedly support taxation of MPs' allowances - running into Sh800,000 sometimes - are unusually quiet. Not just about the MPs they lead, but also about their own desire to pay tax.

One cannot help but think the proposals to tax MPs' allowances were a cynical attempt by the Executive to direct public odium towards the Legislature. Each time then Finance minister Amos Kimunya made those proposals, he knew that as day follows night, Parliament would shoot them down and court public disaffection.

To what end, then were these proposals made? To discredit the leadership of Parliament? Or merely to look to the Executive as Kenya's lone saviour?