After what happened in KisiiHahahahahahaha!I laughed. Thatjeering, bitter and painful laugh of aCORD die-hard. I laughed because ithappened; it happened so fast youmay not even be thinking of it now!Let’s revisit it. Let’s replay it. Let’srelive it. Probably you will laugh too!In Kisii, a community is mourning atragedy. Young people lost theirlives. Students. And yesterday theywere being buried. Because theywere being buried; we in Kenyahave a peculiar way of celebratingtragedies. Death is ugly in the firstfew seconds. Immediately the mediapicks it up; it all over suddentransforms into a national shock;then all politics break loose.I have come to appreciate granddeaths in our country – large scaledeaths. The kind of deaths whichannihilate our whole mortality; thegristly, shocking, terrible, fatal(name them) blows that enter thenational leisure past-time forcefully,and, for a fleeting moment, createsruckus in our otherwise monotonoussurvival for the fittest jobs.But in death, a lot come out. Strangebedfellows meet. Religion meetsthuggery. Opulence meet penury.Politics get redefined or remodelled.Often, it suffers loss.So when Uhuru Kenyatta (I think heis the current president) sent acabinet secretary to ‘read’ hisspeech-a practice I always foundannoying- especially with formerPresident Kibaki’s ‘mavi ya kuku’rhetoric, the expectation wouldhave been that the young and dead,who, had they been alive, would nothave seen the president addresseven a single issue of concern tothem, would rest in peace.But shit happened! Mournersrefused to donate their ears to thepresident! Mourners refused toHEAR the speech. In other words,they REJECTED what the presidenthad to say! How does it feel to tellthe president “Hey you creepy tribalcracker, SHUT UP?” Man, it must bereplenishing!Kenya, this country, is a very weirdcountry. There are things which thepeople do and which outsiders maynot see as ‘functional democracy’. Inthat Kisii meeting was the full forceof the police! In that meeting wereopposition leaders! In that meetingwere government officials. In thatmeeting, as was expected, justbefore the people took over, youwere bound to see a lot ofsycophancy and rent-seeking andpussyfooting and bootlicking; yet inthat sombre meeting the peopleredefined what DEMOCRACY is: Arepresentation of the people.Here comes the million-dollarquestion. What is the significance ofreading the president’s speech?Why? Even more startling, why didwe tolerate this act for this long?IF the president is too busy to talk tothe people, why would anyone wastetime listening to any other person?How many people can ‘represent’the president? Put in another way,who can represent the ‘feelings’ ofthe president? The thoughts? Thenon-verbal cues? Specifically, whywould anyone spend time listeningto the twisted logic of one EricNgeno, the president’s speech-writer; or any of the other types-theItumbi types-with all due respect?Dr Fred Matiang’i may have been aKisii (which just confirms the levelof tribalism the president practices)but sending him to Kisii was liketelling the Abagusii people, “here,see the goodies for you. . .he is oneof your own”. So next time an uglyincident occurs in Luo Nyanza, oneRachel Omamo will be unleashed,and the circus continues. This kindof politics is not digital; it is noteven analogue. This kind of politicsis what, I guess, Homo habilispractised long before it evolved intoHomo erectus, long long time ago!But I like the new grandstanding intown. The new matter-of-factly wayof telling the president “hey boss,you piss many people off”. Thismust continue! So the people inother FREE areas must follow theAbagusii. During national holidays,let devolution song ring! Let theGovernor take charge of his countygovernment; and the president’sspeech, should it find its way to thearena, ought to be sealed and sentback to Nairobi conspicuouslymarked: “EXPIRED”.You see, the kind of politics going onnow does not allow us to say we area nation; that we are a union. No!How else do you explain majority ofthe appointments made so far? Howelse do you interpret the kind ofvictimisation and humiliation othercitizens now face everyday? Kenya,after devolution, is what I call a‘league of friendship’. . .each regionmust strive to remove the lastvestiges of a monstrous presidencyinflicted upon the people throughdiscredited electoral processeswhich even its officers can’t take anoath to vouch the results on!In brief, am saying, the president’sspeech, if not delivered by him inperson, is as useless, even moreuseless, than the paper it is writtenon! In all acts of goodwill by apeople, it should be mailed backNairobi to be kept in the museum ofwasted presidencies at Statehouse,or, at worst, be burnt up in anintentional act of political defiance-and wait for the heavens to fall orhell to break loose-whichevercomesfirst!
Posted on: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 08:07:52 +0000
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