I have reservations about the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission's capacity to make any significant contribution to dealing with our murky past, or to reconstruct Kenya.

My first doubt stems from the commission's timing. Truth commissions are almost always the final piece of a transitional justice agenda; when conflict has ceased and major reform taken place.

Yet, Kenya has not witnessed any substantial transition that would show that we have turned the corner and are now ready to deal with the devils of the past. Many of these rascals are still very much around, with the chairperson of the Commission himself having faithfully served the disgraced Moi regime.

My final reservation about the TJRC concerns its interpretation of its mandate. While the Act allows the commission considerable space to investigate beyond the traditional civil and political violations, it is now emerging that the commission will keep itself to these confines and not give proper emphasis to socio-economic violations.

This is best illustrated by the vacant positions advertised by the TJRC in last week's press. Twenty five positions need to be filled, but only one place is set aside for directing investigations.

No vacancies are available for experts in assets recovery, fraud, land matters or reparations, but lots of jobs are on offer for lawyers, logisticians and ICT experts.

A proper truth commission needs experts in areas other than law to avoid the trap of legalism that has stood in the way of most commissions.

The much-touted South African truth and reconciliation commission never looked at grand corruption, or concerned itself with the redistribution of wealth.

Its report admitted its limitations when it stated: "The consequences of human rights violations cannot be measured only in the human lives lost through death, detentions and disappearances, but in the human lives withered away through enforced poverty and other kinds of deprivation."

In Kenya, we know there is a clear link between grand corruption, kleptocracy and the endemic poverty of the majority of our people who live closer to death than to life.

In other words, the pain of millions of Kenyans is a result of the gain of a few dozen villains, who looted the country's coffers and who must now be held accountable.

SOUTH AFRICA MAY HAVE DISCOVERED and acknowledged the truth about apartheid -- if there was any doubt about its excesses in the first place -- but no real reconciliation has taken place because the economic crimes have not been addressed. Appallingly, the victims of apartheid were granted just a few hundred dollars each as reparations.

The TRC did propose that beneficiaries of the apartheid regime should pay a "wealth tax" but that recommendation was ignored by the ANC administration.

Yet, the 55,000 registered members of South Africa's Khulumani Support Group are currently suing 23 corporations, including Barclays Bank, Ford Motors and IBM in a New York court for benefiting from an apartheid regime that had been outlawed by international law.

They rightly claim that the apartheid system relied heavily on the large corporations' financial and logistical support. This seems the last hope of reparations for the victims of the criminal apartheid system.

The TJRC Act allows conditional amnesty for gross human violations and economic crimes, providing that full disclosure is made. Article 34(4) (b), moreover, states that restitution will be a requirement for amnesty for economic crimes.

Note that it does not need full restitution or mention cumulative interest on top. Worse still, restitution is not even defined in the Act. We will surely end up with mere tokenism with regard to the restitution and recovery of stolen assets.

Stolen African assets are equivalent to half of the continent's external debt, while the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission claims that there are still $3 billion (Sh225 billion) of looted Kenyan money in foreign banks.

The Kroll Associates law firm was hired by the Narc regime in 2003 to investigate these crimes, but was later unceremoniously fired when it unearthed the truth about the Goldenberg and Anglo Leasing scandals.

Truth commissions are established to reconcile society, yet that is not possible without addressing the redistribution of wealth, land and other property as well as recovering stolen assets. Such commissions must also be victim-centred.

In an impoverished country like Kenya, any reparations programme that does not include compensation, restitution and rehabilitation is bound to fail the victims.

I see no possibility of reparations for Kenyan victims unless looted wealth is recovered and used to compensate them. Put another way, any talk of amnesty must be based on asset recovery that then becomes a source of reparations. But is TJRC equal to the task?