Do we even remember the price of the 2007-8 pogroms, subject of the ICC drama? Well, just 1,133 dead, 3,561 injured, 663,921 displaced...only! And, oh yes, the little risk of the country almost going banana. Who wants reminding that ethnic xenophobia has disturbed Kenya’s soul every electoral cycle since the return of political pluralism in 1991? Innocent lives and property were wasted in 1992, we did nothing. And in 1997, no finger lifted. Then the 2008 implosion, but who cares! Den Haag typifies a stinging indictment of fifty years of systematic collapse of our state institutions. For decades, we compromised the sanctity of our judicial edifice, clogging the corridors of justice with the filth of graft and incompetence, reducing justice to a commodity pawned to the highest bidder. This made the choice of ICC or local tribunal a toss of “the untrusted known or the trusted unknown”...Vague vs Hague! We have now evolved this chilling hyper suspicion of any judicial decision at variance with our expectation. The trials are a deserved sharp rebuke of our leadership, a tacit confirmation that we are a nation afflicted by a chronic trust deficit. No one trusts anyone. We could not even trust ourselves with the fabled Waki envelope. Every cycle of national leadership since independence has failed to dry the streams of tribal animosity, forge national trust or exorcise the demons of impunity. While Julius Nyerere was fostering a strong sense of nationalism across the diverse ethnicities of Tanzania, Jomo Kenyatta was sowing seeds of toxic tribal jingoism. As Ghana makes admirable progress in burying a legacy of coups and entrenching a culture of credible democratic practice, we seem determined to regress. No, it is not just three Kenyans on trial in a faraway foreign court. On trial is our very national character and conscience.
Posted on: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 07:16:34 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015