Lessons in respect.

During Moi's time, the little rascals #KOT would be a in a basement getting a lesson on respect or worst. Lets not abuse freedom of speech. ~ @Emma999Too

I will resist the temptation to address the grammar in the above tweet and instead focus solely on an unusual aspect of recent discourse on the legacies of Kenya's former presidents. The author of that tweet may not have been glorifying what went on in Baba Moi's basements, but the casual way in which our immediate history has been forgotten is surely instructive.

There are scores of Kenyans who have been awarded hundreds of millions of shillings by the courts for the torture they underwent during the Moi Era. That is why only the foolhardy would dare to say a disrespectful word against the president then. This nation was ruled by fear. Anyone who spoke out of turn could expect, at the very least, to face harassment and, at worst, torture or death. Fearless commentators of the day fled the country in fear for their lives. The lessons one learnt in those basements were not of respect. They were lessons on the use and abuse of absolute power. They were lessons in the corruption of the State and its institutions, and the perversion of the rule of law.

Among Mwai Kibaki's legacies, when the history books are written, will be his laid-back attitude to public commentary of his policies and his government. Sure, every now and then he would get a bit hot under the collar and lash out at is critics, but he did not instinctively reach for the telephone to get his security chiefs to hunt down every single dissenting voice for a basement lesson in respect. Mwai Kibaki led Kenya into one of its most freest periods in a generation and public discourse was enriched for it - for a while anyway.

What the author of the tweet forgets is that freedom of speech includes the freedom to be obnoxious, disrespectful, unpatriotic, uncouth, scandalous and offensive. So long as what one says is not untrue, slanderous or libelous, one should decide the extent of his or her honour - and then speak their mind. The author of the tweet was reacting to the way Kenyans cashiered the Commander-in-Chief and his disciplined forces in the manner that they handled the murder of 147 Kenyans in Garissa. She was slighted on the Commander-in-Chief's behalf. She recalled a past that never was where people kept quiet because they respected the Commander-in-Chief, not feared him. She wanted decorum and patriotism in how the discourse was held. She did not contend with the raw feelings of Kenyans on Twitter, #KOT.

The genie is out of the bottle. Unless we recreate a Kenya where everyone is informing on everyone else, where torture is the order of the day and where the media is in the tight grip of the Commander-in-Chief and his henchmen, more and more dissatisfied Kenyans are going to exploit the anonymity of the internet and social media to say extremely offensive, disrespectful and unpatriotic things about the Commander-in-Chief, his disciplined forces and his government. Worse still, there is little that the author of the tweet or the Commander-in-Chief can do about it. Recalling Baba Moi's Nyayo House and Nyati House is not it either.