Thursday, April 21, 2011

May We Dwell In Unity....


Read online comments about the IDP situation in Kenya, by Kenyans and it is like a window into the psyche of a mad evil being. Kenyans have been turned into an uncontrollable mass of hate, prejudiced and stereotyping lot- all because the government has chosen, either by design or mere incompetence, to ‘not be government’.
The Kenya government seems to be in control of nothing. The judiciary is sleeping, the Executive is on some kind of vacation, and the legislature?- well we all know what the legislature is busy doing. In the mean time, poor ordinary Kenyans are lonely, cold and hungry. They have become so deprived that they have lost all sense of ‘human-ness’ let alone the patriotism reminisced by Ngugi wa Thiong’o recently. Ordinary Kenyans are now grabbing at each other’s throats desperately fighting for basic survival while the politicians are busy pouring ethnic vitriol into the wounds of inter-ethnic suspicions.
The law seems very helpless. It seems like there is no law in Kenya at all except if you are a government minister and you misplace your laptop- then the whole police force will be mobilized to torture all those that may have some information about it. And the laptop will be recovered. The same police force cannot find drugs traffickers who traffic in the hundreds of tonnes. They cannot be trusted to ensure security for Kenyans as they go about their lives. They cannot apprehend the perpetrators of inter-ethnic hatred or the warmongers amongst us who, with tongue in cheek, stoke age-old fires sparked by abject poverty and deprivation. But then again, maybe they need a command to do all these, from whoever commanded them to search and retrieve the DPM’s laptop, and probably that command has not been issued. Selective justice.
The government is still in the slumber of the old Constitutional order. This is the age of zero impunity. The government has no business poring over the map of Kenya looking for land to resettle people who were bonfide landowners prior to 2008 and did not lawfully transfer these parcels to their current occupiers! The government’s job is to facilitate the safe return to these lands and to sort out the landless ones with the vast public land in its control. Regional or ethnic statements to the effect that people from certain regions may not be settled in other regions are simply a contravention of the Constitution and should be treated as such- infringement of the law. Entertaining such sentiments is encouraging impunity.
It is my submission that had the government acted like the government it was supposed to be; we would not have fallen so deep into the pit we find ourselves in now. We would not have so many issues to grapple with now- basic issues like food and shelter! In a nutshell, the government has been a total betrayal of the aspirations of ‘mwananchi wa kawaida’. The reason why we need to go back to the drawing boards and find selfless individuals who can be trusted to guide our nation to reap the fruits of our labour now and not 2030, or those other future dates. Our prayer to the government is ‘….give us this day our daily livelihood, and don’t forgive our trespasses…for we will not forgive yours..’

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