PROFILES

HON. NAJIB BALALA

Hon.Najib Balala, the Minister for Tourism. In the first President Mwa Kibaki NARC government, Balala was appointed Minister of State in the Office of the Vice Presidnet for Heritage. Born in 1967., he attended Kakamega High School before joining Mombasa Polytechnic for a Diploma in Business Studies.
Balala holds a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in International Relations from United States International University (USIU) and has attended several management courses in leadership and urban management in the prestigious Havard University, USA and University of Toronto.

Balala political career started as the Mayor of the City of Mombasa. He succefully vied for the Mvita parliamentary seat in 2002 general elections. He has since held different positions including, Minister for Gender, Sports, Culture and Social Services and Acting Minister for Labour and Human Resources.Balala has served as Vice-Chairman Kenya Tourism Board (KTB); Chairman all Local Government Association of Kenya, Chairman Mombasa and Coast Tourist Association.

He has been appointed as a Member of Board of Directors for several companies, Makena Holdings Limited, Twin Leaves Limited, Mount Kenya coffee Limited, Gulf Express Travel Limited.He has a conviction of serving the public based on the need to serve others, encourage and help develop astute leadership for sustainable growth. He endeavors to live by the simple truth and to encourage those that he interacts with to attain development through honest and relevant collective efforts. He has a strong interest in international relations, which enables him to leverage diplomacy and financial investment in the tourism and international trade.

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HON. AMB. CHIRAU ALI MWAKWERE

Hon. Amb. Chirau Ali Mwakwere was born in 1945 at Golini, Kwale district. Mwakwere born to a very prominentDigo family attended local public schools. From 1964 to 1966 Mwakwere underwent Teacher Education training at the then Kenyatta College, (now Kenyatta University).In 1974 he graduated with a Master of Education degree from the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom and a Diploma in Education from the University of Reading.

He obtained a Master Trainer from the University of Connecticut, Hartford, USA and a Master of Science in Maritime Studies and International Transport from the University of Wales in Cardiff in 1982 and 1986 respectively.In 1987 he became a Member of the Chartered Institute of Transport, United Kingdom. From 1978 to 1979 he was the Political Secretary at the Kenyan Embassy, Saudi Arabia. In 1979 he became the pioneer Principal Bandari College in Mombasa where he served for ten years until 1989.Mwakwere was the Deputy National Executive Officer, KANU National Secretariat from 1989 to June 1991. He then went into self employment until when he was appointed to serve as the country’s High Commissioner to Zimbabwe in June 1992. His posting at Harare had accreditation to Mozambique, Swaziland and Lesotho.

He served at Harare for six years upto 1998. From 1996 to 1997 he was the special envoy to the Great Lakes Region of Africa and also served concurrently as High Commissioner.From 1998 to 2000, he was relocated and named as the Ambassador of Kenya to United Arab Emirate based in the modern city of Abu Dhabi and was accredited to the rich island State Qatar.Upon retirement from the government service, Ambassador Mwakwere took a job as the Director, Business Development, Africa Region with a multinational corporation based in the Middle East. At the same time he served as Director, Kenya Commercial Bank.During the 2002 political wave, Ambassador Mwakwere joined politics less than three months before the general election and became a key member of transforming the brief-case political party Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that ended up absorbing all the KANU rebels then known as Rainbow Coalition. In the election Mwakwere he captured the Matuga parliamentary seat.

Upon entering the National Assembly he was appointed Assistant Minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where he served for only six months (January to June 2003). In June 2003 he was elevated to the full cabinet and was appointed the Minister for Labour and Human Resource Development where he served for one year until June 2004.When President Mwai Kibaki reshuffled his cabinet and formed a Government of National Unity, Mwakwere was appointed to the prestigious and high profile Foreign Affairs ministry. As the country’s top diplomat, Mwakwere represented the head of state in many international head of states functions, such as the funerals of Pope Paul II in Rome and PLO leader and President Yasser Arafat in Cairo Egypt.In another cabinet reshuffled, Mwakwere was again relocated this time around, to the one of the key and equally powerful Transport portfolio, where he continues to serve. The Minister also held several offices which include Council Member of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) (1990 – 1992), Council Member at the University of Nairobi (1987 – 1991), appointed Life Governor, Agricultural Society of Kenya (ASK) in 1989 and a Deputy Director, fourth 4th All Africa Games Secretariat, Nairobi.

Mwakwere is married to Rose and they have been blessed with three grown up children, two sons and a daughter.

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Katana Ngala: Is He Too Laid Back to Want the Top Job?

FRED OLUOCH profiles Noah Katana Ngala, the Coast politician who has been variously cast as a good judge of political events and just plain unambitious

While he is touted as a presidential material, serious debate persists on whether the Minister for Lands and Settlement, Noah Katana Ngala, is in politics by choice or by default. "My burning ambition in life was business administration and not, as many people think, politics," Ngala said in an interview in 1985, soon after being appointed the Minister for Information and Broadcasting by President Daniel arap Moi. "It (the appointment) was the culmination of my political ambition," he added. Ngala's own words appear to confirm the widely held view that the minister lacks what it takes in courage and resolve to rise to the highest office in the land.

Sources said that in private, President Moi also moans Ngala's "premature" contentment. At a meeting with the political and business elite from the Rift Valley Province early this year, sources said, the president eliminated the coastal politician from being his preferred successor for being "too assuming" even at the grassroots level. "At times we have had to assist him win the Ganze parliamentary seat," the president is said to have lamented, adding that such reticent/placid demeanour would not suit a politically volatile situation like Kenya's.

It therefore came as no surprise to many when he was persuaded to withdraw from the ruling party Kanu's presidential nomination race, which would have given him a shot at becoming the country's chief executive.This move also lent credence to the belief among a section of his constituents that Ngala has depended too much on the powers that be to win his seat since the advent of political pluralism in the early 1990s. "His pulling out of the race without consulting the people who have all along supported him is a clear demonstration that he is a coward," said Sheikh Ali Shee, chairman of the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya.

Ngala pulled out of the contest to support Uhuru Kenyatta, President Moi's preferred political heir and son of founding President Jomo Kenyatta on August 7, hardly two weeks after declaring that he would go for the seat irrespective of the president's choice. But his supporters, who maintain that Ngala is adept at reading political events, now argue that his early withdrawal has been vindicated by last week's withdrawal of fellow Kany vice-chairman Musalia Mudavadi. Last Wednesday, Mudavadi, who like Ngala, is seen as incapable of daring to displease President Moi, withdrew in favour of Kenyatta after one month of half-hearted attempts to resist pressure to step down for Uhuru.However, Kenyatta's backers say the party's four vice chairmen – including Kalonzo Musyoka who is still opposed to Uhuru's nomination unless it is free and fair – had earlier undertaken to support whoever President Moi would pick.For a politician so berated, it is surprising that the 54-year-old minister is the third longest serving MP in the country after President Moi and the leader of the official opposition, Mwai Kibaki. He has logged 28 years in Parliament and a record an uninterrupted 17 years in the cabinet.He is said to be among those being considered to replace the recently sacked former Vice-President George Saitoti.

Another feather in his cap is that he has emerged as the undisputed leader in Coast Province, despite the noisy persistence of another minister from the region, Shariff Nassir, claiming its leadership.Although he is touted as the region's best bet for the presidency, he appears vulnerable in Ganze constituency in the forthcoming General Election. Permanent Secretary Francis Kazungu Mbaya is seen as a possible challenger to Ngala. His backers are, however, upbeat that Ngala's national stature guarantees him the Ganze seat, unless "certain power brokers want him out of the way for reasons other than performance."A first born son of renowned nationalist, the late Ronald Ngala, Katana Ngala first entered Parliament in 1974, aged 26, as the MP for the then Kilifi North (now Ganze), two years after being forced to cut short his business administration studies at the South Eastern University in the US following the death of his father in 1972.His long stay in the Cabinet began 11 years later, when he was appointed Minister for Information and Broadcasting.

Married with three children, has headed various ministries. Urbane and reserved, Ngala, comes across as a politician representing the entire coastal region and not a specific ethnic group, an attribute that afforded him a smooth election as one of the four Kanu vice chairmen on March 18.Critics argue that Ngala could not have reached this far had it not been for riding high on his father's legacy of fighting to harness regional resources for the benefit of the coast people.Sources said that his measured political steps have been influenced by powerful members of the Arab and Asian communities, who control most of the region's resources, and who will not hesitate to cut down to size any politician who refuses to do their bidding. Unlike his late father, who championed a majimbo (federalism) system of government, Ngala has never come out openly on the emotive issue although he is said to favour the idea of strong regional governments.

Expectation was high in March 1998 that Ngala was destined for bigger things when he was picked to lead government business in parliament at a time when the vice presidency was vacant. His father had occupied the same post 35 years earlier. However, speculation that President Moi was grooming him as his successor came to nought when Mudavadi was appointed to the same post after a few months, raising more speculation that Kanu was intent on experimenting with a rotational vice presidency system. This only came to an end when Saitoti was re-appointed to the vice presidency in April 1999.

Unlike his father, who was a firebrand, sources say that Ngala takes each political achievement as the best he ever could, including the March 18 election as one of the four Kanu vice-chairmen, which those others elected along with him considered as a stepping stone to the presidency. His decision to quickly withdraw from the Kanu presidential race compares with his father's decision to hastily dissolve the Kenya African Democratic Union (Kadu) after his opposition colleagues had defected to Kanu.Martin Shikuku, the former MP for Butere in western Kenya said recently that the late Ngala never followed the laid down procedure before dissolving the party, leave alone consulting him. Shikuku was Kadu's secretary-general.

Events indicate that Ngala shuns public showdowns, even as his supporters insist that he is good at reading prevailing political moods. A case in point is when he was temporarily ousted from the chairmanship of the Coast Parliamentary Group in 1999 in a coup led by Magarini MP, Jembe Mwakalu, until President Moi intervened. He had held the post since 1980. For a man whose first love was business administration, it is surprising that Ngala has no visible commercial venture to his name, probably attesting to an inherent slow but sure approach in both politics and business that has earned him a "Mr Clean" tag. The only blot to this image came in November 1998, when he attempted to "shield" some wheeler-dealers in Parliament in the guise of collective responsibility. Parliament was in an uproar after he declined to name those who had been allotted plots in the prime Karura Forest in Nairobi, which environmentalists suspected was being grabbed by powerful personalities.

Born 1948 at Kaloleni in Kilifi district, Ngala is the first born of the late Ngala's 13 children. He attended local primary schools before joining Alliance High School for his "O" Levels and later the Duke of York School (now Lenana) in Nairobi, where he sat for his "A" levels in 1967.
DAILY NATION
Wednesday, September 11, 2002

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