Let's Sing Our Own Song

The West has its own skeletons in their closets and due to the near-perfect propagation of information today, nearly every village on earth knows the unfair power-play, ills, corruption, intrigue and political manipulations/machinations that is Western democracies and the decadence eating away at the Western way of life.

Recent(or historical) events like the civil rights movement in the US, the subsequent assassination of MLK, then later on-JFK, the stealing of (or rigging of) the 2000 elections for GWB, the acrimonious vitriol after the election of BHO in 2008 and 2012, the disfunction of the US style of governance as currently established are all well in the public domain.

The escapades of the likes of Berlusconi in Italy, DSK (formally of the IMF) in France or is it NYC and others have left the West feeling vulnerable. The mainstream press in the West has also shown its true colours as far as objectivity or manipulation of views is concerned. A while back, the Murdoch news house in the UK opened up a can of warms they would have rather remained un-opened. Recently in Kenya, CNN uncovered or covered a militia comprising of one fighter displaying how ready Kenyans were to unleash violence onto one another after the recent elections. This is after the US president advised western journalists about the dangers of visiting such places like Syria or Kenya!

The West has lost the moral high ground to patronize developing nations. As Bob Marley once sang, '…We refuse to be what you wanted us to be…you can't educate 'us' for no equal opportunity….'

That is the reason they are fidgety about the developments in Kenya and other developing countries. They would like to control more the happenings there but they are aware the people know this and are alert. They are stumbling on themselves trying to position for individual and national points of advantage-yet retaining the noninterference attitude expected of them. They know what resources are in the offing to be exploited, and they know too that being seen as too eager to control the events may draw animosity from the populations. They cannot afford to antagonize the local regimes, yet they need to exert their influence in the outcomes of the political maneuvers going on.

We and Them..

We head to the polls to vote for them, win or lose they go back to drink wine together and we go back to treading the wine-press.
Ewe Maulana nguvu yetu, ilete amani kwetu. Utushawishi kwenye mwelekeo wa utu bora

Maisha Bora

Kenya is developing and if indicators of this phenomenon are scarce, one just needs to remember the recent presidential debates and some governorship ones to see what I mean. Kenyans, both candidates and spectators carried themselves with maturity and decorum and left some of us wondering if maybe Kenya has finally come of age.

All is not rosy however, and we still have traits that we need to get over to realize that elusive dream of a mature nation. We need to remind ourselves daily that we do not need to be micromanaged and prompted all the time to live and act positively. We are still dying in scores on our roads mainly because we still board either overloaded vehicles or unroadworthy ones. We are still rushing towards overturned fuel tankers to collect spilt fuels for crying out loud! We litter our environment without care and pollute our rivers knowing very well that our healthcare is still wanting-we ignore the simple teaching that hygiene could keep dangerous and expensive (to treat) diseases at bay. We are still inclined to crossing the super highway not over the 'monkey bridges', but on the road itself- we are too much in a hurry to get to the other side- In more mature societies, low speed traffic is prohibited on super highways let alone pedestrians!

We witness unscrupulous wananchi/public officers giving and receiving bribes and go about our business as if all is normal-'ni kama vindeo, ni kama ndrama!' We watch as thugs harass us day in day out and go on our way as if it's our noble obligation to be harassed. We watch politicians play with our national psyche, cheat us in generating our national income and at expending of the same. We watch helplessly as our national pride and national heritage is degraded and defaced by a few with criminal intent-our wild life is threatened with extinction by poachers and road signs/street lights are stolen by scrap metal dealers. We really do not need by-laws to practice what is right. We do not need Michuki rules to avoid unroadworthy or overloaded vehicles. We just need a more positive and realistic self-evaluation.

Valley of Decision

Kenyans, as we approach the month of March need to stop all and ponder the coming elections. We have very many times in the past been told that we are at the cross-roads and this time around, I really believe we are there- We don't need to be told.

We are going into the polls in a completely new constitutional framework. We are fresh from a murderous violence spree which we all can attribute to the greed and manipulation of our legislators and their goons. We have all been made to feel the pains of mass betrayal and have grown wiser.
Come polling day in March, the demographics demand that the youth of yesteryears have outgrown themselves and need to be replaced. All our traditions dictates this. The Kikuyu nation (c.f tribe) call theirs "Ituika".  This when the elders acknowledge the coming of age of their sons and abdicate their authority to the sons. The "Riika" called Irungu hands over authority to the Mwangi. Other nations (c.f tribes) in Kenya have their respective practices but with essentially the same purpose. This has happened since time immemorial. Customs and tradition demands this. From the national perspective, all those with direct linkage to the independence politicians need to be retired en-masse. Their gimmicks and gymnastics  in the recent past has shown that they have no principles or ideology geared to better the citizens' lot. All they are interested in is securing their positions of power and wealth, that is why they have been aligning and re-aligning themselves without so much as any consideration of the plight of their constituents.

The force that should be dictating our political choice come March should be in recognition of the advancements Kenyans have attained in the technological, and information realm. Historical, generational and demographic movements dictate that Kenyans reject Kanuism/Kenyattaism/Moism and their derivatives. The repugnant isms that have misruled the country since the colonialists left. The schisms created by these isms have been too painful to perpetuate. Let us commence the task of genuinely uniting the nation of Kenya. This is the watershed year and jubilee only means 50 years- Golden jubilee.

My thoughts..

Politics is the quest to strike that sensitive balance or compromise between universal justice, governance and fiscal management of public/community resources. Religions (not to be confused with sects/cults) get interloped in this meshwork by the fact that they all tend to assure justice and peace to all adherents, both in this life and thereafter. They could be used as pillars to support appropriate governance and so could play a positive role in politics.

Problems with religion begin when mortals unilaterally take up the roles of spokespersons for their relevant deities and in so doing become judges of others in their struggle to self-justification. The other negative role of religion in politics is when the adherents tend to relegate their obligations to their relevant deities and just lay back awaiting their gods to mend the wrongs of bad politics. Prayer alone may not get the wrong persons out of office-it may come down to walking to the polling stations and actually voting to get this done.

Striking that perfect balance is an elusive venture since man became enterprising enough to  meddle into the affairs of his neighbour-which is what politics is all about, the shortcomings have ended up in global wars, ethnic cleansing, assimilation and displacements,  and rise of empires. Man’s progress has been loosely tied to politics though there’s a paradox in that good politics hasn’t always guaranteed ‘progress’.

Who is fooling who (Part 3)

I always feel very helpless and angry whenever I ponder the politics and the general state of governance in Kenya. I feel helpless to yell at Kenyans to wake up from the 100 years of slumber and utopian reverie we have been in. For how long will 'our leaders' treat us like tokens on a board game, chess pieces on a chess board, decks of cards to be shuffled and dealt out, heaping and shifting us whichever ways they deem fit to secure their own seats in the legislative and governance positions?
So who is fooling who in the Uhuru-Mudavadi-Jubilee Coalition scenario? What are the dealings being concocted by the other coalitions and what do they portend if they are not honoured? We now hear there was an MOU that was not submitted to the IEBC between Uhuru and Mudavadi. Since when did the masses' right to decide their own shift to these individuals? It is this helplessness and frustration that ignites tempers when a people feel cheated of their right, leading them to behave in the only way nature provides easily-violence, resistance. I just pray and hope that no one strikes the match in this dry, volatile and highly combustible situation and that we as Kenyans refresh our mass memory and avoid the 2007/8 scenario.

Time-Out, Please.

There are many ways to skin a cat, or so the saying goes and the cat that is Kenya definitely deserves to be skinned (if our governance could be equated to cat skin). The new constitutional disposition promises many avenues that will facilitate 'the skinning' which in my opinion is cleansing and making accountable the way we are governed, but we all should realize that this will not happen overnight. Rome, they say was not built in a day and our problems in Kenya are much more complex than the construction of a city.
Ours is the stripping of 100 years of domination, patronization and fiefdoms established through the years by the few powerful and mighty on the majority poor.

As we observe and get dazzled by the kaleidoscopic manner in which the politicians are arranging and re-arranging themselves, aligning themselves to tap the gravy train that is our sweat, we ought not be hypnotized by the drama like the snake does to its prey and get swallowed while in a stupor. All alert Kenyans need to stay focused on the goal and sensitize the rest of wananchi to 'kaa macho' otherwise it will be the same ball game all over again.

There is a move by some individuals masquerading as the representatives of Kenyans in the diaspora to urge the court to suspend the polls in march and however noble their argument is, they are playing into the already crowded 'game of thrones', of political acrobats inventing new moves and refining old ones.  Simply adding drama to an already chaotic stage. It will not bear the fruits we need at this point in time. Entrenching the spirit of political universal suffrage in Kenya should happen- and it will,  but it will definitely not happen before the next polls. There are many more Kenyans living in Kenya today and in March next year, (more than those in the diaspora) who will not be able to take part in the polls-for one reason or another. Many will be due to complex gerrymandering by our politicians, others will be due to deprivation of such basic necessities like food or water, but let us go and start the cleaning up process. The brooms might not be the best (as yet) but just let us start. A long journey starts with just one step. We will get better brooms as we go along.

There are promises by the new constitution that we should be focusing our energy on to implement, example being clauses dealing with leaders' integrity, the guaranteeing of security to all wananchi, and the facilitation of all resident Kenyans of voting age to register as voters. These are functions the government is well placed to perform and we need to hold it accountable to do so.