Kenya's War On Its Kids

Today’s teargassing by police of pupils from the Langata Rd Primary School protesting the grabbing of their school playground, has drawn condemnation from across the political divide. At least it has on Twitter. If there is one thing around which Kenyans can be relied on to congregate, it is their kids. The welfare of the young ones is routinely trundled out as a justification of governmental action and societal outrage at everything from corruption to homosexuality. However, it is all a charade.

In truth, Kenya is a country at war with its own children. Children are the denizens of the future. And Kenya is busy destroying the future. Government policy, elite greed as well as citizen apathy and disempowerment have combined to rob our kids of more than playgrounds.

What the police did today was deplorable. But it is no more deplorable than the violence of poverty, ignorance and disease that many children are forced to live with on a daily basis. Or that the education system is a complete shambles.

It is no worse than the fact that kids in Baringo have to cross croc-and-hippo infested waters in skimpy rafts to get to school. Nor that when they do get to school, half the time, their undermotivated, underequipped and underpaid teachers don’t even bother to show up. 

If they cared, Kenyans would collectively hang their heads in shame over the fact that over 100,000 youngsters die annually before their fifthbirthday, most within the first year of life and most from easily preventable causes. Or that our current spending spree is robbing the future to pay for the present, saddling kids with debt even before they have had a chance to earn their first shilling. According to the opposition CORD coalition, when the Jubilee government came to power, every Kenyan owed Ksh.44,000. A year later, each owed Ksh.66,000 and by 2017 each would owe Ksh.140,000. It is disgraceful that their futures are being mortgaged away so a few can have opportunities to eat now.

Kenya lives in the present, and in the moment. Little thought is given to how we got here and where we are going.  We studiously refuse to learn lessons from the past. Our contempt for historical accuracy leads us to fete the villains and condemn the heroes of our past. Our ignorance makes us easy prey for ravenous politicians and cements their impunity. To date, for example, the report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, our first real attempt to lay bare the bones within our common closet, continues to gather dust.

As the saying goes, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The constitution, meant to be the single greatest governance achievement of the past quarter century, is being systematically undermined in the same manner its predecessor was, its strong guarantee of freedoms effectively reduced to mere suggestions. Similarly, we are condemning our kids to a future that will be no better than our past.

Along with their history, we are also robbing them of their heritage. Wildlife poaching, which has now reached crisis proportions, continues unabated and with the acquiescence, if not active support, of the government. We have already pretty much lost the fight to save the legendary tuskers and, according to one study, across the continent, more elephants are being killed each year than are being born. At this rate, within a century children will only be able to see rhinos and elephants in books or a museum.

Values too seem to be going extinct, especially in the public sphere. Watching the adults practice politics, our children learn that honesty and integrity do not matter are words emptied of meaning. They learn that a good, well-reasoned argument is no match for demagoguery, bullying and violence; that your last name is the greatest political and economic asset (or liability) that you have.

Further, youth is constantly reproduced solely as a place of either innocence, ignorance or incitement. Youth cannot think for itself. Youth can have no agency or politics. That must wait till tomorrow. Thus children protesting the theft of their playground must be incited. Young adults who take to the streets to challenge power must be drug-addled. The cannot articulate legitimate grievance. They can have no ideas or solutions to offer. They cannot offer leadership today, only tomorrow.

All this is a form of violence. A betrayal of the inter-generational pact that parents provide for, support and protect their children. That we should leave for them a better world than the one we found.

So today we will shed tears over the treatment meted out to the kids of the Langata Road Primary School. Today, we will raise our voices in anger. And it is right that we do so. However, we must also protest the violence our kids are subjected to every day in our name and resolve to undo the world of hurt that we have been storing up for them. Otherwise, it would all be an exercise in hypocrisy.

We must realize the truth: that our children face far worse things than teargas canisters. And that the adults must stop fighting them and start fighting for them.

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.