Kenya: Is The Dream Over? Wake Up And Smell The Fear.

Lately, questions have started to be asked about the conduct and outcome of the election. And the more information leaks out, the more the questions keep coming. For me, the first significant crack in the official facade came at the end of May. Buried deep in an otherwise unremarkable story about the IEBC's proposal to change the way public funding for political parties would be calculated, is a startling admission by an unnamed Commissioner: "We are having sleepless nights reconciling the presidential results and those of the other positions. Over a million votes must be reconciled with the others."

If the Commission is indeed burning the midnight oil to "reconcile" the fact that one million voters seemed to have discarded 5 of the 6 ballots they were given without anyone noticing, and then only cast a vote for the presidential election, then that would raise more serious doubts over the integrity of Uhuru Kenyatta's victory. More than three months after the election, the IEBC is yet to release the full election results and every day, this delay further erodes the already shaky public confidence in the electoral process. A recent opinion poll by Infotrak found that nearly half of all of Kenyans had their doubts which pretty much reflects the divided nation. Even Western governments that were eager to ignore concerns over the veracity of the results and in a rush to  embrace the new administration, seem to be backing off a little. "Uncertainty following Kenya’s elections" was last week given as one of the two reasons US President Barrack Obama's is ducking Kenya (the other is obvious).

You would think that all this would be enough to shake the Kenyan media and society out of its post-election slumber. You might expect outraged protests, ala Brazil and Turkey. Of course you'd be wrong. As a society, we seem resolutely determined, in what has become the prevailing mantra, to "accept and move on." Although a vocal and increasingly strident and shrill minority continues to man the online barricades and trade insults, much of the society has indeed moved on. But what is it that we have moved on to and what have we accepted?

Every time I hear the phrase, it seems to mark the end of a dream. Today the election seems like a world away. Instead of a celebration of nationhood, it has become something else to forget, another nail in Kenya's coffin. As the simmering resentment of those on the losing side is swept under the carpet of indifference and resignation and the winners attempt to drown their doubts in a histrionic cacophony of  shallow optimism and empty chest-thumping, one can't help feeling that questioning the poll is flogging a dead horse. 

Time to wake up and smell the fear, I suppose. There is a real reluctance to go back and explore what happened. A real terror of peering behind the curtain of official truth, of what that might reveal, of what it might provoke. In this atmosphere, thick with our terror of each other and of our common past, "accept and move on" is a comfort blanket that smothers the spark of outrage while soothing the afflicted conscience. In its embrace, we are suffocating the idea of Kenya, of a nation of rights, responsibility and opportunity for all; where life, hope and choices are not defined by one's surname.

Even when we rail against the brazen greed of MPigs or the alleged racism of ArtCafe, the anger sometimes seems contrived. We wish we could feel as genuinely Boniface Mwangi seems to, and in the throes of an imagined outrage, we may even swear to attend the next Occupy Parliament demo. Deep inside, I think, we recognize that something has changed. Something fundamental. A sense that Kenya and Kenyans cannot long endure in this fearful place where we have exchanged the truth for the lie, where we hide things in plain sight.

That realization is, I think, Kenya gasping for breath, for life. Yet we want to move on and forget. Every morning it is a little easier to ignore the cries of a dying nation, to accept that the pursuit of justice is an inherently dangerous thing. As every day inflicts upon us new outrages, pretty soon, what should be outrageous becomes normal. And we learn to ignore or silently endure the humiliations. The national spirit shrivels even further.

Where we once looked to freedom and rights, understood ourselves to be exceptional in our part of the globe, were proud of our fractious and loud media and civil society, today we celebrate silence and lies and tyranny and manipulation. Where we once we saw ourselves as a beacon for the region, we have become a place to hide, where questions are not answered but themselves queried. No longer an island of peace, we are today content to swim in a sea of chaos, corruption and injustice.

The other day I got to thinking that perhaps we've given up on doing better because we believe we've already tried it and it didn't turn out so well. In 2002, we elected the activists. We tried the good guys. We gave them their shot and they gave us tyranny and assassinations, and corruption and Anglo-Leasing and the Arturs. Perhaps this is why we now do not care for civil society. And why we've turned the country over to the bad guys, the corrupt, the wicked, the indictees and the drug dealers. They surely could do no worse!

But the election has given us an important insights into our own part in abetting this poverty of values among the governing elite. The brutal, kleptocratic leadership can afford to ignore us because they are aware that deep down we are afraid that we are just like them. That we are just as murderous. It is this awareness that we fear but it is also, paradoxically, the truth that will set us free. For only by accepting responsibility for the past, can we own our future. By learning to believe in our own agency and to stop hiding behind the tribe or leader.

I don't want to accept and move on, to forget what the election revealed. I don't want to turn from it or paper it over or minimize it. I want to face it. Remembering and acting upon that remembrance is the only salvation for Kenya.

Let Them Do Their Worst

North Korea seems to punch way above the weight of a country perpetually on the brink of starvation. It seems every time the Supreme Leader feels like it, he can send the world’s only superpower into a tizzy. Lately, he’s been playing up the idea of a war on the Korean peninsula, abrogating the 60-year armistice with the south, threatening all manner of terrible inflictions and issuing warnings to diplomats that his government could not protect them once the impending hostilities were underway.

Only, there are no impending hostilities. It is an entirely contrived and scripted crisis reminiscent of the Barry Levinson movie, Wag The Dog. Yet the dog is wagging. Alert levels have been raised, naval assets redeployed, allies assured of protection, anti-missile systems sent to faraway islands. The question concentrating minds in Washington and Beijing and Tokyo and Seoul is “What does he want?”

Of course, this is not the first time the North Koreans have manufactured a crisis and the only reason anyone takes them seriously is that they may have a nuclear weapon as well as one of the world’s largest armies and we are not too sure that their instinct for self-preservation will always keep them from using both.

In a sense, our elected representatives are not all that different from the North Koreans. They too are prone to throwing childish tantrums, threatening all manner of consequences if we do not acquiesce to their demands. Like the North Koreans, they have a nuclear option –they can shut down the government by refusing to pass crucial legislation- and say they are willing to use it. This too is proving a successful tactic as minds across the country are focussed on what they want: an outrageous increase to their bloated salaries before they have even set foot in their offices. Like the US, our government is also casting about, trying to talk them down and come up with a number they can get on and work with.

Well, as a father, I know a thing or two about childish tantrums. And the first lesson one learns is not to reward them. In fact, the best policy is to simply ignore them. The more attention you pay, the more intense they become. Soon, this tiny, weak human being who could not survive more than a few hours on his own, who is dependent on you for every form of protection and sustenance, becomes convinced of his power over you. The tantrum becomes the expression of that power and its effectiveness is predicated on your not calling the bluff.

So my wife lets my kids hold their breath, sulk in the corner or scream till they are blue in the face. It doesn’t take long for the myth of power to crumble. I think there is a lesson there for my fellow Kenyans and the world. We do not have to respond every time spoilt MPigs or tin-pot dictators regress to their terrible twos because we refuse to cater to their every whim. There’s no need to feed their delusions, or give in to their imagined power.

Sometimes, we just have to ignore them (and their demands), as we did successfully with the matatu strike a few years ago. Call their bluff. Let them do their worst.

We should however be on the look out as MPigs being Mpigs, they may try to sneak in their increments through the back door.