The Kenyan Roulette

Once, when I was young boy, one of my numerous uncles, a policeman by trade, came calling. He had with him a rifle and he set it down in the corner of the room. I couldn’t take my eyes of it as he and my dad chatted away. Its presence in the room was both terrifying and comforting. Terrifying because of what it could do. Comforting because, at least in my childish imagination, it would be doing it on my behalf, wielded by people on my side against those who would do me harm.

As I have grown older and hopefully wiser, I have come to see that the state’s capacity for violence is rarely comforting, that the state rarely wields its violence on my behalf. Rarely does it carry guns into homes to protect the people within. Neither is it a source of comfort to encounter them in the streets.

Though we like to tout ourselves as exceptional, as an island of peace, Kenya is actually a very violent place, where the language of violence is routinely used to mediate relationships, between parents and their children, teachers and their students, the men and their women, the rich and the poor, the state and its subjects Security and peace seem to have become the passwords to a system of exclusion that means at any time any of us could be at the receiving end even as we declare we have peace and security. On the receiving end, in fact, to preserve peace and security.

Violence has become normalized, acceptable, desirable even. It has become a way to build the nation by constantly defining ourselves in terms of opposition to one another. Kenyanness is constantly recreated  by acts of violence. Thus it becomes the height of patriotism to call for a war with Uganda over a tiny piece of rock in Lake Victoria. And unpatriotic to question the actions of the government in Somalia or in a shopping mall in Nairobi.

In the aftermath of the Westgate attacks, Kenya will again be redefined by the violence we will mete out against those we have othered. Today it is the Muslims, the refugees, the Somalis, and the Somalians. There will be little outrage when doors in Eastleigh are kicked down and people in Garissa are hauled away and some village in Somalia is leveled the name of fighting terrorism. Just as when it’s the turn of civil society activists and ICC witnesses to be threatened or hunted down in the name of preserving a tenuous peace. Before them, the Kikuyu, the Luo, the the Kalenjin the Oromo, the Sabaots, the Pokot, the Turkana, the Whites, the Indians. Everyone gets their turn on the Kenyan Roulette.

In this Republic of Fear, there is little need for justice, or values, or rights. Only someone on whom to focus our ferocity, and with whose body and dignity to establish our claim to togetherness. We constantly terrorize and dehumanize. It is a place where the victims of that violence are told to accept and move on. Where cops laugh at women reporting rape. Where a senior public official can tell the hundreds of thousands displaced by the 2007/8 post-election violence that they came out “way ahead” and face no opprobrium. It is a place where we fight, not to end oppression, but for our turn to be the oppressors, our turn to eat.

The republic is defined by the very violence we say we want to end but yet celebrate. Where the fear, adorned in the language of civility, is what unites. Where we are one because, not despite, our terror of one another. A place where reconciliation becomes a euphemism for “until next time.” A place where economic growth need not generate good jobs nor end poverty, where the purveyors of violence take what they want, when they want. Where we dare not question official truths lest we are ourselved othered.

I suppose we are not unique. It is in the nature of states to be violent. They are after all the product of exclusion. Parceling out the world according to arbitrary imaginary lines drawn on maps by men of power can only create communities where the state is allowed to decide who is a human being and who is not and where we can legitimately have otherwise obscene arguments over who deserves dignity and who doesn’t. Where humanity is accessed and indeed defined by things like citizenship and passports and IDs, the state gets to certify your very existence and can declare you a non-person.

The malevolent power, represented by the menacing presence of that gun in the corner of the room, can only offer a temporary comfort, an illusory safety, a false peace. True comfort will only come with true community, when we embrace our humanity and refuse to be defined by the logic of the state, by the logic of othering, the logic of fear. When we are one with all, not just with those who look like us or speak like us or believe what we do. Otherwise, we'll just have to take our chances on the roulette.

The Sin Of Being Female

In the last few days, our airwaves and social media accounts are inundated with opinions on what the verbal and physical abuse perpetrated against a female journalist and a female MP mean. I came across an online discussion where some were suggesting that the public humiliation of Kiss FM presenter Caroline Mutoko and Nairobi Women's Representative Rachel Shebesh at the hands of Nairobi Senator Gideon “Sonko” Mbuvi and Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero, was a ploy to distract attention from the President and his deputy's problems with the ICC.

I personally find it disturbing that some evidently regarded discussing the violence, humiliation, sexism and exploitation that our women suffer daily as a distraction from more important issues.

How we treat our women is a measure of how we regard ourselves as a society. After all, Wanjiku has become a synonym for ordinary folk, both male and female. We speak of the motherland and ascribe a feminine gender to our national collective. Kenya is a “she” and has “her” interests, we say. The disdain we have for women mirrors the contempt our rulers have for us. When Kidero slaps Shebesh and Sonko insults Mutoko, they are not just putting powerful women in their place. They are expressing their contempt and fear of an empowered society, of a populace that dares to question the actions of their betters.

In my view, the problem isn't that people are talking about Sonko and Kidero. It is that they are ONLY talking about Sonko and Kidero. Not about how they are representative of a societal disdain of women. Not that this attitude is responsible for the silence on the rape epidemic in our towns, the horrors beading and FGM and domestic violence, the lack of investment in maternal health which leads women to be beaten by hospital staff after being forced to give birth on the floor.

It is why when we discuss abortion, we are blind to the dangers that pregnancy poses to women. We have one of the highest rates of maternal deaths in the world. Many lose their jobs or have to forgo their schooling for having the temerity to conceive unwanted kids. Many are ostracized by their families and abandoned by their men. Many have no incomes, no education, no support , to take care of the kids we insist they bear.

We refuse to invest in girls education, to protect them, to empower them, to provide sex education and contraception preferring instead to blame them, to call them fornicators and adulterers and murderers, to turn a self-righteous blind eye as they die in their thousands or get maimed for life at the hands of backstreet quacks.

It is never about the men. It is never about the abuse of power.

Accept and move on, we tell women. Suck it up. It's your lot as a woman. You must have done something to deserve it. It is just punishment for your immorality, for the sin of being female.

The parallels between how we speak of the abuse meted out against women and how we speak about the violence meted out against us are hard to ignore. It is always our fault. We drive too fast. We are too tribal or stupid or lazy or ignorant. It is never the fault of those who steal elections or organize and perpetrate the violence. It is never about the brutality, negligence and corruption of officials and officers. It is all our fault for making stupid decisions at the ballot box and we must pay taxes to fund our potentates’ lifestyles as just punishment for our guilt. The poor must forgo drinking milk because the government must have the revenues to build roads for the rich. We do not demand accountability or better because we do not think we deserve such.

Thus the talk on the ICC trials almost completely ignores and excludes the victims. We are only concerned about the safety of the powerful, about what their prosecution means and about whether they are being treated fairly. That 1600 Kenyans died five years ago barely registers. Who cares about them or their stories or their families? Just like the treatment of Mutoko and Shebesh is seen as a distraction, the demand for justice is portrayed as a distraction from the more important pursuit of economic development. Just as Shebesh's husband apparently feels it is he, not his wife, who deserves an apology from Kidero, the powerful see our lives and livelihoods as mere fodder for their ambitions and can stipulate that accords between political leaders can be a substitute for justice.

No. This is not a frivolous issue or a distraction. It is a conversation we should be having but one we are determined to ignore precisely because it is about women. And because it is really about us.

Can Uhuru Free Himself? Not Likely.

 The richest man in Kenya is now its leader and in his first address has indicated that he is viewing our problems from a distinctly economic and technological perspective. Throughout the inauguration ceremony, we heard promises of double digit economic growth, free laptops, free maternity health, a fund for women and youth.

But the events of the last month have exposed have exposed deep rifts in the national psyche that cannot be papered over with money alone. President Uhuru Kenyatta, to his credit, recognized that his election has divided the country but said little on how he was planning to undertake the process of reconciliation. He would do well to go a little further. Though he is the lawful President of Kenya, he should acknowledge that the election, in the manner in which it was conducted and adjudicated, has not only alienated a significant proportion of the population, but has harmed the credibility, if not legitimacy, of his victory. There is thus a large disaffected constituency he will need to actively win over, if he is serious in his desire to be the president of all Kenyans.

Vague appeals to national unity, to moving on and working together are not enough. His government must demonstrate the will to reform the flawed electoral system that has brought him to power. As he works to deliver laptops to primary schools, he must also insist on a full and comprehensive audit of why all the systems set up to guard the transparency of the election failed. After all, many were deployed in these very schools.

It was also encouraging to hear him talk of "a permanent peace through which democracy is glorified and not undermined" as opposed to "a perfunctory peace" that is held hostage to the five year election cycle. Than in itself is a valuable acknowledgement of the spell of fear and paranoia that has swept the country over the last month and that is beginning to be buried. I hope he also recognises that this national pathology has deep roots in traumatic historical events and outcomes that the country has avoided confronting for the last five decades. If he truly wants to get rid of it, he must not allow us to move on until we have truly come to grips with it. I hope his administration will begin by lifting the ban on public demonstrations to allow the people opportunity to peacefully vent whatever frustrations they may be harbouring. After all, he did declare his commitment to the protection of fundamental freedoms. I hope he will not seek to roll back the gains won over the last 20 years.

The report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, which is expected in less than a month, should provide another perfect opportunity to further this work. However, that will require a commitment to truth and justice. Given how his election campaign has, with more than a little success, sought to disparage and deligitimize civil society organisations that advocate for justice and good governance, as well as the accusations of interference with witnesses at the ICC and the personal cost he would bear if the prosecution were to be successful, many are understandably sceptical about his resolve in this regard. But perhaps with the heat of the electoral battle now fading, and with the case against him at the Hague looking less likely to succeed, he may decide to surprise us all.

Will we now see a let up in the assault on civil society, the bedrock of any democracy? Will we see moves to provide some semblance of local justice for the hundreds of thousands of victims of, not just the violence of 2008, but of the political violence that has accompanied every election since 1992? They, sadly, didn't merit a mention on his speech. Will he be committed to justice for the millions more who have been impoverished by the succession of corrupt and greedy regimes that begun with his father's and whose policies have bequeathed him much of the wealth he enjoys today? Not having mentioned corruption once in his speech, does he consider stamping out the vice a priority and will he be able to resist the vulture "businessmen" associated with his own campaign?

In a very real sense, if President Uhuru Kenyatta is to live up to his promise of working towards "a rich and abiding peace," he will have to confront the very system that has put him where he is. He, perhaps even more than the rest of the country, would need to confront and expose painful realities about the conduct of his family and its old friends. He would have to live up to his name and free himself, and thus his countrymen, from the shackles of the past. If he found the courage to do so, he might just be the best thing that ever happened to Kenya. So, Godspeed to him.

But we all know that this is unlikely to happen. The likelihood is that President Kenyatta will, like his predecessors, have little interest in justice or fighting graft. Instead he will, as he has already done, continue to urge us to get back to work, to build the nation, to forget the election. He will seek to bribe us and buy our loyalty with free goodies and he will continue his campaign to undermine both the ICC and local civil society. Whether he succeeds in this will be up to the rest of us. 

Not So Blind Justice

Delamea culpa

Pregnant With Remorse?

Before we start beating our collective breasts and shouting racism and neo-colonialism over the supposedly lenient punishment handed to Tom Cholmondeley following his conviction for the manslaughter of Robert Njoya, we should consider this: A day before he sentenced Cholmondeley to 8 months imprisonment, High Court Judge Muga Apondi sentenced Florence Gathoni to 3 months in jail for stabbing her husband to death earlier this year. He said the latter sentence would have been heavier but for the fact that Florence is 19 weeks pregnant. 

Perhaps the kindly judge also felt that Cholmondley was pregnant with remorse