They Can as easily Sink You as Save You…

The Draft Constitution is out. I am actually elated that it came out this soon and more so because we get to give feedback on what we think. I have just acquired a soft copy version because it would be easier to peruse through it while I do my work on the computer. That is the good part. The bad part I politicians have started running their mouths, spearheading posturing antics that can threaten yet another constitution making process. The scary part other than them not reading the draft first before opening their mouths is that they probably have an audience that is either too illiterate, to ignorant, both, or too tribal to think otherwise. That is what I want to write about today.

First I will let you know where I am at. I have been busy with my thing that has started setting its own agenda and dictating my pace. But even with that, I picked up a copy of the draft constitution so that I can read it and make my own conclusions about what is of contention. I am sure that many sober minded Kenyans are with me on this point. Even the not sober minded have the reality of the 2007 elections to sober them up for long enough read through this document. But I am afraid that things are still the same with regard to thinking for ourselves and not relying on political impulses for decision making.

A few years back, we were in the same place that we are at now. The Bomas draft was out and all the people I look up to for political, civic and legal wisdom were almost content with it. But then the AG took that draft, ran around with it; from Kilifi to Naivasha and I think Kilaguni too. In the end, what he presented for us to vote for at the referendum was not what was produced at Bomas. Being a lawyer, he knew which clauses to “edit” and had done so. The people I look up to said that this was a bad thing for so many reasons. They partly influenced my decision. Largely, I voted no for the draft constitution then because the AG “a lawyer” had run all over the country with this document and all over sudden it was billed as better than the Bomas Draft. I thought not and my gut said NO! So I voted no. Not so much because I read it but because I did not trust it.

And it is all about trust, isn’t it. We must all be able to trust the constitution that governs us. We should not feel that the constitution is skewed towards some interests more than others. I was not so sure that I could trust that constitution that the most sober minded people in the country advised me against. At the end of the day, my choice to vote no was because of this eternally wise quote,

“In any struggle between doubts and certainty, cast your lot with doubt and then proceed with certainty.”

But this year is different. I have the draft with me and will be reading it in bits and pieces for the next three weeks or so. From watching all those lawyer series from Boston, I actually believe that I have in my grasp a pretty good understanding of the law and constitutionality. More important, I understand that all legalese is subject to interruption and hence the reason I need too seek out people who will correctly inform me about those aspects of this draft that are not clear to the naked non-legal eye; the sense beyond the jargon…

Lee Thayer happens to be one of those writers who have greatly influenced my thought process. He wrote, “Pick people who inform you very carefully. They can as readily sink you as save you.”

The last time we had a discourse on the constitution, we as a country picked politicians to inform us. We now have the benefit of hindsight because we know how that ended. I propose a different route altogether this time round. Even before the draft came out, politicians were at it again, posturing for positions that they are pretty sure will be skewed in their favour. And let us be honest, most of these politicians who are already mouthing off are complete idiots. And I do not mean that as an insult, I mean it as a statement of fact. Their only asset is a loud mouth and short memories; that way, they get to shout whatever they want without thinking about it and not worrying about the implications. You and I have to worry because we were the victims of such careless speeches the last time round. So I ask you today, read what you can in the draft constitution and carefully pick who will inform you about those areas you find contentious.

I do not know about you but I have a couple of names in mind when it comes to such analysis.

• Muthoni Wanyeki: She is the epitome of calm, collected, eloquent and supremely intelligent. She’s headstrong and resilient too. She has been in the Civil Society for long enough to understand the implications of most of the issues that we will be seeking clarity on. When it comes right down to it, I trust her. She is watching my back and every time she speaks, I can confidently assert that she is speaking on my behalf.
• Mutahi Ngunyi: I doubt that there is a better political analyst in the country than this man here. He calls it as he sees it and takes no prisoners in his analysis. I advise you to read his columns in the Sunday Nation for the next couple of weeks. I am sure he will have something about this draft that you will need to ponder about. He writes well, is exceptionally intelligent, very wide travelled and has killer anecdotes in his pieces. Lastly, you’ve got to respect his candor.
• Louis Otieno: I like this guy. We would get along if we met. This is the only TV Host that I have followed from station to station. He is now at K24. This man here has the most intuitive interviews in Kenya and possibly even Africa. When politicians shy away from your panel when you invite them, you must be doing something right. WATCH HIS SHOW. H e leaves no stone unturned and will not shy away from asking what needs to be asked. He is no sycophant and his questions always catch the least bright people in his panel napping. No wonder politicians run from his shows.

That is my two cents worth. I really hope that we have learned our lessons. If I could have it my way, I would cut off the tongues of politicians.

Sobriety is needed during this most important juncture in the course of our history.

Keep in mind that progress requires some casualties. I just hope that those who inform you are not politicians and that politicians will be the greatest casualties of this new constitutional dispensation.

Whispers of the Unheard! – Part 3.

In answering his question, I jumped in with my own theory. My take was quite simple. Looking back at the formative years of this country, it is easy to spot similarities between the men that were assassinated. JM, Pio Gama Pinto, and TJ were all politicians whose leadership transcended tribe. At a time when tribal politics was all the leverage politicians sought for posturing and positioning purposes, these three men had chosen to travel the road less traveled and were rewarded for it. It was that extra quality that enabled them to melt through tribal barricades without putting on the pretentious smiles of most politicians which endeared them to all and sundry. This was also their Achilles heel because those pretentious smiles of their fellow envious politicians lit the way to their respective deaths. They had bright political stars and the powers that be saw that it was easier to eliminate those pawns that were on the path to being crowned queen, the most powerful piece in the game. Their blindness to tribe that accorded them adoration from the masses politically meant that they had a clear path to the presidency that only death could stop, and so they died. With them died that symbol of nationhood that we are frantically searching for today.

This was the time when Parselelo Kantai made his way into the tent. After an apology and a brief introduction, he listened for a while and then posed quite a potent question. He asked whether any of us had ever watched the documentary series “Makers of a Nation” by Hillary Ng’weno. We all had. He then asked whether any of our politicians had integrity because gauging from this documentary series, one would be hard pressed to find any one politician whose principles were not contingent on the political mileage they stood to gain.  The same people took up outrageously opposing stands depending on the political tides and hence the difficulty in confidently attributing certain core values and principles to any of these politicians. So going back to the assassinations, he asked whether any of these “heroes” had any integrity and hence the reason died or were they destined to follow the morally bankrupt route that their colleagues who lived did. Can we confidently assert that they were beyond reproach or have we just given them the benefit of doubt because they died before we could find out?

Alkags, another author who had just launched his book – a compilation of short stories by old men and women whose voices were unheard – joined the conversation at this point. He had come in earlier but was busy eating a bugger behind me. His mind was set. Informed by the intricate knowledge he had garnered while interviewing the older generation for his book, he was convinced that it all came down to being on the right side of an argument. He figured that since very few politicians in Kenya would be considered principled, the positions they took on any one issue were based on what they stood to gain. He said that those who were assassinated were not morally superior, they did not have the integrity we claim they had, and they would not have “saved” this country had they lived; they were just politicians who were on the right side of the argument at the times of their deaths. He argued that even today, if a politician with a track record tainted with corruption like a graffiti wall were to die, accidentally or not, Kenyans would claim that he was assassinated for his beliefs and dub him a hero. He was convinced that we would have hated these guys like the rest of them if they had lived, for integrity in Kenya is subject to convenience.

When Alkags was done, this guy of Indian or maybe Caucasian descent said that whichever way we chose to look at it, it came down to what Marvin (me) said. He said that it was also his belief that those who were assassinated had to die because of the political threat that they were becoming. They represented what the politicians of the time and also today’s both within and outside the establishment feared the most, leaders who would not be coerced for fear of losing tribal votes because they already had all ilk of voters in the bag. He wondered if we found it curious that only those leaders who could without travesty transcend tribal lines were the ones to meet the assassin’s bullet. This definitely exacerbated tribal mistrust by creating rifts between tribes and in retrospect, it was the classic case of divide and rule policy that politicians have been reaping from to date. He then requested us to ask ourselves whether we were really serious about putting an end to tribalism because all the actions we had taken as a country suggested the contrary to be the case. For instance, instead of urging them on and nurturing them, we killed the only leaders who never hid behind tribe; the very people who were the symbol of a tribe called Kenya. And even in today’s charged atmosphere of tribal alliances that began back then, one gets the feeling that if such versatile leaders with nationwide appeal as TJ were to emerge, they would be met by a bullet from new age assassin on the orders of old age politicians or their apprentices.

And it has nothing to do with tribe is my belief. People from my own tribe will kill me if they thought that my nationalistic outlook will deny them the leverage of consolidating tribal votes for posturing purposes. And nothing said it more clearly than the words of Okuku, the brother to Tom Mboya when he addressed mourners at the funeral of JM Kariuki. Borrowing from the now famous words of the German reverend, he said and I paraphrase “when they killed pinto, you kept quiet because you are not Indian; when they killed Mboya, you kept quiet because you are not Luo; now they have killed J. M. Kariuki.”

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Part four will follow tomorrow…

Whispers of the Unheard! – Part 2.

So what began as whispers in bedrooms, at street corners, and in university hostels had now grown into fully fledged public conversations that were challenging the status quo. The people who were party to these conversations were querying everything under the sun within the Kenyan borders. Gradually, the whispers of those earlier unseen got louder with each additional conversation that joined this amorphous grid of people talking. And with every opinion raised outside official channels, the official accounts of our history among other state positions diminished in stature.  Those who were there but were left out of the history books began coming out of the woodworks to tell their stories. They were distancing themselves from and denouncing the official accounts saying that they were fabrications based on official hearsay. Apparently, our school history curricula were accounts written by intellectuals as politicians recounted their romanticized version of what took place. This was propaganda par excellence that is only today coming under attack on a wide scale. We are only learning that politicians hijacked the independence train after it docked on the uhuru station and have been riding it to date. But no more! The secret is coming out and with the advent of Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and MySpace in this age, information has become viral and it will not be long now until everybody is in on any one of the thousands of conversations simultaneously taking place.

The recurrent theme in most of these conversations is that the writing of our history needs to have another side to the coin other than the president’s. Soon enough, students with the benefit of this alternative information at their fingertips will give teachers a tough time answering what they themselves were never taught in school. There will be a need for a total overhaul of the curricula to reflect the true dialectics of history that we were never privy to. Watching Hillary Ng’weno’s documentary series ‘Makers of a nation’ should serve as a preview for those who will rewrite the curricula. It has exposed all those elements that define humanity in its coverage. It was not edited to make it clean-cut, picture perfect, and full of hero worship jargon like we were used to. On the contrary, it has laid bare all the angles that we could never see before. It has shown that these “leaders” were liars, thieves, selfish, corrupt, and conniving bastards at their best. Basically, they were just men among who were fewer men who had integrity. The few good men unfortunately never got far. Ng’weno’s account is one that has been lost to many and which needs to be taught to this new generation. It has all the cards laid bare on the table such that the rainbow is no longer as pretty. The illusion is over and the reality harsh.

But today, people will not sit back and watch this documentary as the source of all truth but rather as just one way to look at things. Society today has embraced the concept of “a google a day keeps ignorance away” and so this documentary will be just one among many sources of information to be interrogated. It will be incorporated into the ongoing conversations. Having questioned the version of history that was peddled to us for a long time, I had my ear out scanning the channels and soon enough I caught on to the whispers signal. I tuned in and became part of the undertone conversations. I have since kept tabs on these whispers both off and online and have been part of their journey to becoming open conversations. Hopefully I will be instrumental in their becoming movements. In these conversations, I have accepted ideas, rejected people, insulted personalities, acknowledged struggles, agreed to disagree, and changed my mind. In short, I participated. Throughout all these, my friends who don’t quite get it have on numerous occasions asked me why the hell I am so preoccupied with this stuff. My only answer to them has been the mind-blowing excerpts of what is actually being said in these different forums.

Earlier this month, I was at the Storymoja Hay Festival to experience all the various forms of art being exhibited there. There was music, poetry, storytelling, discussions, debates, pictures, drawings, movies, books and every other thing that constitutes art. Each was happening in its own tent at different times over the three days the event lasted. That Saturday afternoon at the Can-do tent is where I last engaged in yet another conversation. This was an interesting debate where the topic to be interrogated was ‘Assassinations in Kenya’. Listed as moderators were PLO Lumumba and Parselelo Kantai and on getting there the room was packed…

I waited with the rest as the organizers frantically ran about trying to locate our renowned moderators but they were nowhere to be found. There was however this guy who decided to start us off. He introduced himself as an author but whose name I am at pains trying to remember. At first he had difficulty finding his words and articulating the subject at hand and that prompted a few people to walk out of the tent. They were frustrated that they did not get to see Kantai or hear a big speech by PLO. Lost to them though was the fact that conversations craft their own agenda, set their own pace, follow their own rhythm and that no one big speech could substitute for collective thought on the issue. If PLO had come and started giving us a speech, I would have walked out. Those of us who understood this remained and our author guy got us started by posing a question. He asked us whether those who were assassinated and to whom we had since designated the tag “heroes” really deserved that title. He especially took issue with the late J. M. Kariuki whom he termed a hypocrite because whereas in public he claimed to speak for the poor squatters, in private he had amassed thousands of acres of land. By virtue of owning that land, he was himself responsible for creating the squatter problem in the country. He said that the late JM was merely opium for the masses; he was no hero and since we all die, death whether by assassination or accident does not make us heroes…