Fredrik Laurin and Clara Zid, June 2023
Public service doesn’t have the same ring to it in Kenya as it does in other countries. As a long time journalist and editor at the Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation (KBC), Milton Nyakundi found it to be controlled by the political leadership. The solution became to rely on the journalists themselves.
After leading an industrial action against mismanagement and political interference at KBC and petitioning the National Assembly to pass legislation that empowers the independence and autonomy of the public broadcaster, Nyakundi opted out and resigned due to pressure and victimization. He and his colleagues didn’t feel they had the freedom to express themselves.
Instead, he started the independent media platform Kurunzi News in December 2016. Since then, Kurunzis reporters have exposed some of the biggest corruption and bad governance stories of the past five years in Kenya. Among them a multi-billion scandal at Kenya Pipeline on the construction of the Mombasa-Nairobi pipeline, the loss of millions of dollars from Football Kenya Federation, and the exposure of influential Kenyans involved in human trafficking are some examples.
Service to the public is what all journalism is about but ironically publicly funded media organizations increasingly find themselves in similar situations as the Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation. Twitter recently stamped “state media” on American NPR and Swedish Public Service. The mother of all public service, the BBC, is going through constant cuts and downsizing. Danish public service DR was halved a few years back after demands from the far right coalition partners of the government.
Nyakundis solution has been to ask the reporters themselves to stand up for their profession. In spite of the game-changing revelations Kurunzi News has brought to the public its 18 reporters don’t get a proper salary.
Kurunzi News is a platform for those willing to run a story that other media are not able to run. The journalists offer their time for the importance of journalistic independence.
“At the end of the month, I give a stipend just to cover their basic requirements”, Nyakundi says, adding that he lets them use his personal and family resources whenever “the team is out on assignment in any part of the country”. “I have to go into my pocket to facilitate every operation, including paying for internet bills for reporters and editors that work from home,” he reveals.
Since Covid, Kurunzi News has not been able to build its advertising revenue up and it has scant funding. Nyakundi hopes that by the third quarter of this year, he would have secured a financial grant to ease up the burden he has had to bear to ensure Kurunzi News is up and running.
“I want to give back to the profession and open up the opportunity for journalists to have the chance to express themselves. I was denied that opportunity working in public service and in other media houses”.
Nyakundi says that, although the Constitution of Kenya 2010 guarantees the right to picket and protest, Kenyans are not allowed to demonstrate and express themselves and exercise fundamental rights. ”There is a real danger of negating the gains of the new constitution Kenyans enacted a few years back. But we are having an awakening of the media now” Nyakundi says.
But that awakening has come at a price, not least for Nyakundi himself.
In 2018, Kurunzi News reported on the lack of accountability in Football Kenya Federation.
Their reporting led to the arrest and prosecution of the then president of the Federation, Nick Mwendwa. In 2022 William Ruto, who was close to Mwendwa, became the new president of Kenya and when he took office, Mwendwa was reinstated and the case was dropped.
Nyakundi now became the target for intimidation, threats and blackmail.
“Certain individuals operate criminal enterprises to preserve their illicit way of doing things”
Nyakundi mentions the ”cartel-like” football federation leadership and recounts how Kurunzi News journalists were targeted and most of them had to relocate to safe houses and bylines were removed from their stories.
“We became targets of intimidation, blackmail and harassment”.
People close to the new president called Nyakundi and told him that once they took over the power they would come for him. ”Either force me into submission or frustrate me to death” Milton Nyakundi thought, and went into exile.
Nyakundi has been sued and even offered bribes to stop publishing certain content. Kurunzi Media’s web server was attacked. Kurunzi articles and web pages have also been maliciously reported and flagged by search engines as part of the scheme to silence Kurunzi News.
According to Nyakundi they lost access to the website three times during the last two years: “Our website was redirecting to unrelated platforms, we lost some of the heavy-hitting articles and we got our website deleted.The last time, we got all our pages red-flagged on search engines. If you search some of the popular topics we have covered and which had the highest traffic, no articles show up”. The third time, in May 2022, they were working on a dossier about the elections.
“In Kenya there is freedom, but that freedom only applies in general terms; when you report about certain individuals or institutions, then you become a target”
Milton Nyakundi still has big ambitions for Kurunzi News. ”In the coming five, ten to twenty years, Kurunzi News will be the most independent news organization indigenous Kenyan”.
“Unless we have brave men and women who are willing to speak out against the oppressive signals from the current government, we are likely to slide back to the years in the 1990s, and media risk being controlled and gagged”.
He is now running Kurunzi News from exile. “It’s difficult, especially for my children.” Being a single father he harbors real fear. In October 2018 their mother, Rebecca Njoki, was found dead in Nanyuki River. The kids were five and two at the time.
The police never found the killers and Nyakundi thinks they really came for him, and his work.
”Yes, there was a connection because of how it happened and the circumstances that followed it” he says. ”I try to comfort myself as a Christian that the Lord gives and the Lord takes”.
Kurunzi News is hosted by Virtualroad since 2023.