Ezekiel Mutua And Kenya's Language Of Silence

Ezekiel Mutua is at it again. The head of the Kenya Film Classification Board has developed a fondness for showing off the perks that come with his job. In April, he took to social media to boast about using an airport’s VIP lounge and flying business class.

This week, he posted pictures of his diplomatic passport (which, to the schadenfreudic glee of many tweeps, an embarrassed government has since ordered to him to surrender) on his Facebook account to brag that he had received a visa to visit the United States despite his bigoted and illegal crusade against “content promoting LGBT and Atheists culture in Kenya”. "I didn't even have to go to the Embassy for biometrics or pay the visa application fee. It was delivered to my office free of charge," he averred.

Mutua’s immaturity predictably drew a large number of mocking responses which only spurred him on to new lows, petulantly sending insulting direct message calling one “an idiot” and a “bloody fool”. But however disgraceful we might think his antics to be, we should be careful not to be distracted by them. 

It would be a deadly mistake to focus on the theatrics and ignore the real danger. For that lies, not in his braggadocio, but in the silence that has greeted his distorting the law and the constitution in an attempt to impose his views and beliefs on the rest of Kenya. 

Mutua has used the KFCB, which was set up to regulate “the making and exhibition of cinematograph films, for the licensing of stage plays, theatres and cinemas” in ways not contemplated in legislation. He has attempted to police parties, the internet, TV ads and even claimed the power to regulate the content of political shows. Though there is no law criminalizing homosexuality, he purports to declare it illegal and to ban internet videos that celebrate love between same sex couples. He has claimed that atheism is similarly unconstitutional despite the clear constitutional prohibition on establishing a state religion.

Yet few of these outrages have elicited much discussion outside social media. Much of Kenyan media seems to be blissfully unaware or even worse, dismissive, of the threat he poses especially as we head into the election season. If nothing else, one would expect that the idea of a government official prescribing the limits of political speech would have both journalists and opposition politicians up in arms. But it has elicited little more than whimpers and an empty threat to sue from media owners, which Mutua has laughed off.

This silence mirrors a wider quiet, a tendency to focus less on the substantial and more on the superficial. Last week, as the country marked the third anniversary of the horrific attack on the Westgate mall, I noted that official accounts of terror incidents were mostly designed to cover up the incompetence and culpability of senior officials and officers rather than reveal the truth. But the really alarming fact is that the government’s obviously flawed tales do not elicit much commentary or questioning from either the press, civil society or the opposition.

But just as the silence over the mistakes and criminality at Westgate allowed them to be repeated at Mpeketoni, Garissa, Mandera and El Adde, so the silence over Mutua's overreaching only serves to embolden him and spur him on to further violations. Like the proverbial frog slowly boiled alive, we are all imperiled by the failure to raise the alarm over his menacing of citizens and the government attempt to control the lives and opinions of citizens. 

Kenyan novelist, Yvonne Owuor, has described silence as one of our languages, which "plays out in the hasty attempt of the powerful to shut down independent voices that cannot be controlled." From the harassment of bloggers, to the firing of free-minded journalists, editors and cartoonists, this "shutting down" has been particularly evident in Kenya media. But it is not only happening there. Today Mutua is illegally transforming the KFCB into a tool to bludgeon vulnerable minorities -and political dissidents- into silence.

It is a truism worth repeating that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Whether it is about security and terrorism or the diminution of citizens’ rights to free speech and conscience, this silence leaves us all vulnerable. Freedom from predation by terrorists or even by a narcissistic and insecure public official, will only come when we loudly and consistently demand it.

Why Kenyans Must Not Take The Government At Its Word On Terror Attacks

It was a strange incident by any description. According to the police, on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the US, three women entered the Mombasa Central police station pretending to  report a stolen mobile phone. The police say one jumped over the counter and assaulted officers with a knife before dousing herself in petrol and setting herself alight. The others, one of whom was said to have a suicide vest, threw petrol bombs. All three were shot at killed at the scene and within a few hours, three other women, all refugees from Somalia apparently staying at the house of one of the terrorists, had been arrested for links to the attack.

Nine days later, a human rights group accused the police of manufacturing the incident and murdering three innocent women. Coming on the eve of the anniversary of the attack on an upmarket mall in Nairobi in which at least 67 people died, the accusation struck a chord.

Like with the Mombasa incident, much of what exactly happened inside the Westgate Mall three years ago continues to be shrouded in mystery. An award-winning reconstruction of events by Tristan McConnell,  a foreign correspondent based in Nairobi, concluded that “far from a dramatic three-day standoff, the assault on the Mall lasted only a few hours, almost all of it taking place before Kenyan security forces even entered the building.” Much of the information issued by the authorities both during and immediately after the attack turned out to be misleading and blatantly false.

From claims of 10 to 15 attackers led by the famed “White Widow”, Samantha Lewthwaite and armed with belt-fed machine guns that had been secretly placed in the mall a few days prior, to allegations of hostages being held and subsequently freed by heroic security agencies, to the much-ridiculed accusation of the terrorists setting mattresses on fire to distract the advancing forces, much of the government tale turned out to be untrue.

When shop owners returned to find their stores empty and vandalized, and pictures of rows of empty beer bottles in the mall’s bars as well as CCTV footage of Kenya Defence Forces soldiers carrying laden plastic bags out of the Nakumatt supermarket- where most victims perished- emerged, there was little doubt that the “siege” had been a cover for massive looting by the very teams supposedly deployed to save them. A promised public inquiry into the attack never materialized and a report prepared by a joint parliamentary committee, which purported to clear the KDF of involvement in the looting, was tossed out for being “incompetent”. The rub of it is that three years later, there is still no official account of what transpired.

A similar darkness envelopes the Al Shabaab attack in January this year on an AMISOM military base manned by KDF soldiers in which an estimated 200 troops were killed. As with the Westgate incident, again much of the information the government and the KDF put out was later revealed to be false. An Al Shabaab propaganda video of the attack showed no indication of the three truck bombs, “each [with] a force equivalent to the terrorist attack on the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998” as well as “truckloads of suicide bombers” as claimed by the Chief Of Defence Forces, Gen Samson Mwathethe. Further, his promise to answer lingering questions once a Board of Inquiry had carried out a full investigation remains unfulfilled eight months later.

There is thus good reason for scepticism about official accounts of alleged terror incidents, which mostly seem geared to cover up the incompetence and culpability of senior officials and officers. The fact that the police have been unable to produce the suicide vest supposedly worn by one of the alleged attackers in Mombasa as well as the emergence of a video apparently showing two of the women being shot outside the station, even as one of them appeared to have her hands raised in surrender, give credence to such doubts.

This is not to say that there was no attack. Rather it is incumbent upon all of us to be much more critical of the overnment's offerings on terror and to demand independent and public investigation of the attacks that have occurred in the past five years. We must insist that all officials and officers found either negligent or complicit in the commission and cover up of crimes are held to account. Only by doing so, can we ensure that government learns the lessons it needs to learn in order to do a better job of keeping us all safe.

The Eating Season Is Here

I have a theory about why our political parties engage in obscene shows of wealth in the midst of the dire poverty that pervades Kenya. In a country where politics has been reduced to an eating competition, politicians must demonstrate to their supporters that they are capable of laying on the buffet.

From the reported 2 billion that the Jubilee Party spent on its coming out party to the fleet of swanky new buses that CORD has unveiled in Mombasa ahead of its ten-year anniversary, the political coalitions are attempting to outdo each other in parading their wealth. During the last campaign season, helicopters became an indispensable asset and as we approach the 2017 poll, it is clear that no politician worth his salt will be seen dead without one. Their importance to the political class can be seen in the oft-cited fact that they are exempted from VAT even when school books aren’t.

For the people, such displays of opulence are meant to signal that the season for feasting has begun. In return for a seat at the table of state where the country is gobbled up, the politicians will dispense their largesse. The choppers and Prados, the buildings and buses, are the promise of that.

The limits on campaign finance spending recently announced by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission will do little to diminish appetites. With Presidential candidates each officially allowed to spend up to Sh5.2 billion, candidates for 337 Parliamentary seats dishing out up to Sh30 million each; potential Governors and Senators for the 47 counties each allowed to serve up Sh443 million, and folks competing to be one of the country’s 2,258 MCAs offering up to Sh10 million each, it is clear that there will be plenty of money rolling around. And that’s only what they officially spend.

Unofficially, you can expect much more will be on offer. Given the ambiguity surrounding the IEBC regulations and lack of clarity about how they are to be enforced, it is unlikely that there’ll be much of a deterrent to exceeding the stated limits. For example, the period covered by the new regulations is the six months prior to August 8, 2017, the date of the next General Election. But five months ahead of the February 8 start date for the official campaign period, the country is already firmly on an election footing and money is already being spent without IEBC oversight.

Clearly, many, many billions will be poured over the next year or so.

The question is: What will these billions be buying? And sadly, for many, it will be silence and acquiescence. For most Kenyans, whose lives have been blighted by governmental neglect, theft and oppression, this is their one chance to get something back from the system which only seems to take. They know, from previous experience, there is little chance that all the promises that candidates and manifestos will make will amount to anything after the polls. They know that the system which their vote will legitimize is already rigged against them; once the politicians are in office, the opportunity to hold them accountable effectively disappears.

For example, although the constitution guarantees that the electorate has the right to recall an MP before the end of his term, it also effectively defeats its purpose by saying those very MPs will “enact legislation to provide for the grounds on which a member may be recalled and the procedure to be followed.” Predictably, the MPs made sure it would take nothing short of a miracle for them to so lose their seats. The law is currently being challenged in court.

For many, the electoral period is their only chance to “eat”. And in return, they will be expected to stay silent as the politicians steal and kill in their name. “You took our money and voted for us therefore you are complicit in our robbing you”.

But it is all little more than a ruse; a false bargain since the people are essentially forced to negotiate with a gun held to their heads. The displays of opulence that inaugurate the start of the eating season serve to hide the violence of the dispossession under a veneer of civility and mutual consent. “Willing buyer, willing seller” as Uhuru Kenyatta famously described it in 2013.

Remember that as you take your place at the national buffet. Bon Appétit.