The Tragedy of Sameness.

How do you know that your government loves you, cares for you and wants nothing but the best for you? You don't. Not really. Because the government is an abstract idea, a convenient fig leaf for when men and women with power conspire to make your every waking moment a nightmare. That must be the way the hundreds of thousands who survived the murder, rapine, rape, arson, assault, dismemberment, displacement, banditry and robber in the aftermath of the 2007 general election must feel. Elections should not have aftermaths; in Kenya only the 2002 and the 2013 general elections can be said to have ended without aftermaths, though they continue to live a bitter aftertaste. Anyway, back to today's whinge. The survivors of what Kenya's profiteering supine Fourth Estate has dubbed the PEV must be living the worst nightmares of their lives.

If you have never suffered an unfairness, an injustice, an assault you can never appreciate the bile that rises in your thorax when you see the cause of the unfairness, injustice, assault strutting around town like the cock of the walk, the cat that swallowed the canary, the Bull. Whether we will admit it or not, there are tens of thousands of women who have been violently disgraced, who cannot go back to their homes, their villages, their towns because their violators will be there, in person, smiling toothily for all to see with that secret knowledge that shouldn't be theirs. There are thousands of men who cannot go home either. What they had been brought up to believe could only happen to women, happened to them, in front of their wives, and daughters and in the full glare of their neighbours. Their humiliation is total. They can no longer hold their heads high. They cannot rebuild their identities. They are shattered shells held together by bitter, bitter bile.

The survivors remember the promises. They remember the insincere concentration of the members of task forces, commissions and offices of prosecutors. They even remember the politicians' deceptions about compensation, and truth, justice and reconciliation. How foolish they feel for believing. How foolish they must feel in the digital age to be mocked with the digital records of promises that shall never be fulfilled. How foolish they must feel that they gave their trust so freely. Again. Because it wasn't the first time they gave their trust so freely. Their fathers did. Their grandfathers did. And each time they did, freely, openly and hopefully, somebody metaphorically pulled down their pants, bent them over a barrel and without so much as a "by your leave" or a bit of Vaseline, proceeded to commit unmentionable violations against them.

Few of them care for the charges levelled against the President or the Deputy President. They never have. They have never me the two, see? In their secret hearts they know they will never meet the President or his deputy. They will read about them; they will see them on TV and hear them on the radio, but they will likely never meet the two, share a cup of tea with them, sit with them and tell them their troubles. But they will meet the men and women who committed such barbaric acts against them and their families, friends, neighbours. The survivors will meet them at the market, in church, on the bus, at the hospital. And the survivors will also meet the ones who ensured their violators walk scot-free. The survivors will meet their violators, and it is the survivors who will avert their eyes in shame. It is the survivors who will bow their heads in fearful, respectful silence. It is the survivors who will be forced to apologise for being nuisances, to mouth the words as they supplicate themselves for pittances. It has been so for seven years. It has sunk in by now. The survivors are on their own. The ICC has said so. Their government has said so. The civil society has said so. They have been reminded that while some things change, the things that define us as a nation, as a country, as a people remain tragically the same.