Friday, April 1, 2016

Divided We Stand, United We Fall?...


The talk about disintegration is not far fetched. We have seen that it is very easy to get to that unfortunate ending. We were literally on that threshold in 2008 and we were lucky to have attracted the eyes of the international community who on the other hand did not do the fence sitting act they had done with Rwanda in '94. We retreated, and here we are now.

We cannot be talking about dismembering Kenya as a solution to the problems facing us. I would understand the opinion one may hold, that Kenya could end up dismembered- because that is a possibility if we do not self diagnose appropriately, but I would argue to high heavens and hell below against considering that as a solution
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The President stood on the floor, the other day and beseeched Kenyans to remember and embrace the spirit of the founding fathers/mothers in the covenant they prescribed at independence. I found myself contemplating that spirit and couldn't help thinking that the real nationalistic covenant is unwritten. That it is the spirit (within us) that tells us that it is wrong to loot the national coffers while masses are dying in abject poverty. The written covenant however, states that we need to have evidence to call out thieves and looters, lets us celebrate our thieves and looters- and that might be the one handed to us by the said fathers, the one that continue to plague us to date.

 "People cannot talk of ethnic inclusion in governments composed by ethnic leaders who believe they are in power thanks to ethnic support and that leaders from other communities are not fit to be president. Negative ethnicity has transformed communities into ethnic kingdoms and their leaders into ethnic kings who convince their people to fear other groups."- Koigi Wa Wamwere, Daily Nation, Friday 04/01/2016, Pg 18.

Our devolution model could serve to enlighten our people that it's not the other communities who impoverish us, that even our own do us harm. What explains the mis-management of our county affairs by our own? Born and raised in our neighbourhoods? Our own kin and kith? Explain how a County governor can purchase a bunch of wheelbarrows at ridiculously exorbitant prices while poor children in his fiefdom are dying of hunger or lacking education due to poverty, patients are dying in the local hospitals due to lack of medical equipment. Wouldn't this translate to national looting/mismanagement if the same are elected into national offices?

Corruption has entangled our way of life- social/cultural/legal framework like that thorny vine climbing your favorite fruit tree. It has even sent its deadly tendrils into the legislature. To enjoy the fruits we will be forced to uproot the whole bush and re-plant the tree. The trick is to get the whole nation pulling together to uproot this evil vine. We have so much been polarised that our national flag now has over forty two colours instead of the basic three. We look at the evils bedeviling us through the prisms of ethnicity, social status and where one would like to be on the "eating queue" that we come up with a vague distorted image of the problem(s). Thus we fail- over and over again at the task of ridding ourselves of what ails us. Blowing whistles- most probably just because we are not 'eating',  is just a sideshow performance. An exercise in futility.

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