New Year Resolutions have been made. And broken. The New Year is well and truly underway and Kenyans, as is their wont, are optimistic that 2012 will bring happiness and wealth in equal measure. Those constantly whingeing about the challenges of the year are dismissed as the harbingers of doom and banished to their own solitary ruminations. It is the preachers of optimism who receive the blessings of the masses and the encouragement of the people. And yet, there is an undercurrent of anxiety. The Kenya shilling refuses to remain strong against world currencies, notably the US dollar. The economy continues to throw, to use a cricketing term, googlies at the working classes. The political atmosphere continues to be poisoned by the rancid ambitions of the men and women angling to succeed Mwai Kibaki to State House. The New Year has also brought with it old sins: the constant sexual abuse of children and young persons; the carnage on our roads has refused to abate; murders continue to be committed; and, the government assures us, it has finalised rules to carry on its programme of demolitions and evictions from properties it alleges have been acquired irregularly or illegally. Now we have the sad, unseemly spectacle of the Deputy Chief Justice being raked over the coals for acts, allegedly, that placed a security guard in a state of fear for her safety and her life. 2012 has started with a bang!
The war of words between the Commission for Implementation of the Constitution and the Office of the Attorney-General is yet to be decided decisively in favour of one or the other. Teachers, university dons, doctors, nurses and civil servants still threaten to go on strike if their pay demands are not met. Parliamentarians have resisted, and continue to do so, the calls by the Kenya Revenue Authority to pay income tax on all their earnings. "Grassroots" elections for all political parties have been scheduled; some have been suspended by the courts, while others have been challenged for violating political party constitutions. Depending on whom you wish to persuade, political alliances are either flourishing or are on their last legs. In all this, the Prime Minister continues to be seen as the man to defeat in 2012; not his party, but the man himself. Politics, as usual, is not about manifestos or policies, its not about ideology or principle; it is all about one man and the dozens that would defeat him at the hustings.
Disappointment in public television continues, as a does disappointment in the language employed by breakfast shock-jocks who take a perverse pleasure in broadcasting lurid and salacious content for the edification of their legions of listeners to the discomfort, shame and embarassment of the silent majority. The public discourse of matters of spiritual, political and social importance continues to be characterised by anodyne phrasing and craven ignorance. The State and the people seem incapable of having a conversation without resorting to time-tested sloganeering, shouting and fighting. It seems that everyone is doubling down on the mistakes of the past year, hoping that their tactics and maneuvers in 2012 will finally bear profitable fruit. It seems that the definitions of "mad" applies appositely: doing the same thing over and over in the hopes of a different outcome.
Yet, the people still hope. Parent have begged, borrowed and sold their properties to see their children off to school, even though the State, in its wisdom, has lengthened the period of instruction in the first two terms and shortened the last one in the hopes of giving exam candidates the proper atmosphere and environment to sink or swim. Doubts continue to be expressed about the wisdom of rejigging an 8-4-4 system that has been with us for nigh on thirty years. When change comes, whether at the instigation of the State or as the inevitable result of the turning of the wheel of time, we shall resist until it is apparent that resistance is futile. "Our children are our future" will be the slogan that we hurl at each other when they sit for their exams and it is apparent that only a privileged and lucky few will secure admission to institutions of higher learning or secondary schools of no mean repute. Hundred of thousands, meanwhile, will be consigned to the dustbin of mediocrity and invisibility, left to chart a course in a world that neither cares for their future nor their chances of success. And as the wheel turns further, millions of the young will join the existing millions without work or opportunity to work. Poverty will stalk them to their dying days, breeding resentment and anger and guaranteeing that the promises of the honey-tongued snake-oil salesmen that we call leaders do not come to pass.
In all this, the pundits, the opinion-makers, the leaders will continue to see only what they want to see ion 2012, blinding themselves on issues far larger than the political. The Succession will obsess them to the total exclusion of everything else. In their obsession, some rank outsider will see opportunity. With their minds firmly fixed on The Succession, and all its dramatic twists and turns, he will see an opportunity to fleece his fellowman, to lie, cheat and steal, and he will pray, for such people also pray, that his schemes and machinations come to pass. Millions upon millions will pay for this myopia. And when the year draws to a close, the same despondency that characterised the past one will envelop the nation and Kenyans will once more look forward to a New Year filled with promise.
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