Here we stand…………………

I thank the Greeks for inventing democracy for the sole reason that I make my voice be heard through the ballot every other electioneering year. That even I, son of nobody, born of the lowly, may determine who leads my country for a ‘window’ of five years –which in the Kenyan context is eternity. It is eternity because the number of ills committed against the people in such tenure is infinite. We are a people who stood before the British with machetes, rungus, stones, knives, and talisman from traditional witchdoctors and demanded self-rule. Nay! Freedom. That elusive thing called freedom has no equal in the eyes of the oppressed. We the people stood in front of Union Jack and shed tears of joy as it was being lowered for good. There was wine, dance and song as the last dregs of colonialism were poured out. However, since then, we only stand as tribes and not a nation.

Alas! Just for a short respite, perhaps reminiscent of the day the Union Jack was lowered, we stood (a mammoth crowd I must add) at Uhuru Park singing Yote Yawezekana Bila Moi, to usher change of regime –without mugumo tree falling. The people of the republic, tribeless and unwaveringly patriotic, chose their leaders. We stood as a nation! The past was gone. Our generosity of spirit forgave all the ills of Nyayo and the people pledged a renaissance of Kenyanness. Echoes of a new dawn reverberated throughout this expansive land with hope for a better future. With that stroke of genius we annihilated the monster of negative ethnicity.

Hardly five years later, thanks again to ancient Athenians, we stood before the ballot boxes with our sacrosanct IDs complete with kura to make our voices be heard. Lo! Negative ethnicity has more lives than a cat: It did indeed resurrect. There was one mistake –we stood only as opposing tribes not as one nation under God and powers that be. They say that there are two ways of obtaining and maintaining power: ballots and bullets. The latter takes relatively shorter time, albeit with loss of life and limb, to deliver state power, whereas the former takes too long with more proselytizing than Jehovah Witnesses may endure. Yet too many debates, party platitudes well augmented with bribery and a host of electoral offenses must come in handy. On that day, we the people of tribes stood with less grandeur and wanting patriotism as bullets replaced ballots. The apocalypse was approaching through the sharpened machetes, arrows and AK47s.

Surprisingly, our diversity which we now chirp is our strength was the main adversary. Despite our likeness in skin colour and blood, the languages we speak mattered more. The whole world watched in consternation as seams of national fabric broke their elastic limits. The threads of patriotism were frayed and hung loose. Kenya was a country of many nations then; the Kikuyu Nation, the Luo Nation, The Kalenjin Nation, and what not. Kenyans stood at the edge of precipice with gaping crevices that threatened to disintegrate. Didn’t we just blame it on finagled elections and not our want of worth? We had stretched the threads way too far. Brother rose against brother as smoke announced the great satanic conflagration that consumed life and property. We were tried, tested and found unworthy. During that time we tried to stand on rickety legs but our knees gave way so that we prostrated ourselves before tribal kingpins a mid smoke and chocking sounds of a sea of perishing humanity.

             I preserve no kind words for my countrymen and I because we are brazen faced and thick skinned. Even if we wrote treatises on ‘the Kenya we want’, there is the big problem of ‘the Kenyan we don’t want’. He is the red-eyed machete-wielding moron who sniffs tobacco and marijuana before engaging in orgies of senseless beheading. She is the intellectual who fans the flame of tribal bigotry and spreads hatred through justifying condemnable actions. When one threatens the Chief Justice and a junior immigration officer summons enough audacity to bar him from travelling to Tanzania, no well meaning ‘polished’ citizen should offer justification. Even profuse apology is not enough. The political class is largely failing to inculcate a sense of tolerance and unity. They have now replaced the ‘swinish multitude’ Edmund Burke infamously wrote about when he said, “……democracy has put us in the hooves of swinish multitudes.”They form the bigger bulk of ‘the Kenyans we don’t want’.

I hear the war drums beating in the tyranny of numbers; in the refusal to talk about land and historical injustices; in the vote rigging claims and many more instances. I hear the herald announcing war. Mpende msipende is war talk. The sword is drawn from the scabbard to the grindstone for more sharpening. And why? Because we want to announce to the whole world that 2007/8 PEV was just orientation; we have now learnt the ropes of mass murder, genocide, and ‘politicide’.  It is Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC who invented the word ‘politicide’ after ZANU-PF blood hounds under Joint Operation Command (JOC) killed every member of MDC they could smoke out. Comrade Bob called it ‘Operation Who Did You Vote For’ led by Gen. Perence Shiri, to wipe out all MDC and MDC-M support, documented in Peter Godwin’s The Fear. Mugabe too has a mouthpiece called chiShona Radio, which Gowin writes ‘….the venom being pumped out is reaching for the excesses broadcast by Interahamwe’s Radio which helped trigger the Rwandan genocide’. In fervent prayer, we do hope that Kameme FM, Ramogi FM, Kass Fm, and other community radio stations may not go the chiShona-Interahamwe style.

There is nothing more exasperating than when elite use its knowledge to justify wrong ends. They are now spewing venomous hate speech against one another. If you even deign to take an online glimpse you may choke. It is a war ritual to engulf your soul with enough hatred for the enemy. Hatred stills pain and steals away sympathy. The strokes that you receive from a dying opponent are vaccines. We might just go ahead to intone, “Oh! Pain, where is thy sting when I take delight in my countryman’s brutal murder?”  Aren’t we sons of Cain? The warlords are seeking the slightest opportunity to tell the international community and China (among the BRICS) that, “I am not my countryman’s keeper.” And yet we stand and sing national anthem with pious mockery.

We know many nations who have stood in the face of adversities and calamities to announce their resolve to preserve the unions and to defy the odds. We are not among them! During the American civil war, the union forces led by Gen. Grant conquered the confederacy army commanded by Gen. Lee after Abe swore that God told him to preserve the Union. They have not had another civil war except minor civil rights movement skirmishes. Next door, the people of Rwanda know the lessons of hate speech and Radio Mille Collines was  found culpable. Why don’t we just ask Kenyan elite to visit Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza and Ferdinand Nahimana in prison for practical lessons on liability of hate speech to an individual? Anyway, Rwandan economy has boarded space ship while ours is traveling aboard Kenya Railways. Nay, it’s the snail-like RVR.

It is not a frivolous matter. Ask Germans what it means to divide a city into two by a wall and claim you are not part of the whole. They brought it tumbling down when brother needed brother most. Today, lofty Germany is standing before, EU and the UN as one nation with the strongest economy. The list of those countries that realized the ‘error of their ways’ and decided to stand united is long but we are not one of them. Abe said that a house divided against itself shall not stand. I think he had Kenya in mind.

I heard a dream that March 4 came and we all turned up at the polling center with ballot in one hand and machete in the other. Before casting our votes we all shouted in unison, “We the people of  Tribe do stand here to partake of bloodbath until the last man standing takes his own life!” I could not continue with that terrifying dream. My alarm clock saved me from horrid scenes of violence.

I only wished the people in my dream could start their creed with, “Here we stand as one nation, one people of free will and conscience …..”

Truly, here we stand to make a national choice!

Shem Sam