Of hashtag-accusations

How do you know if someone is acting against the national interest? In the civilised world, you will find out the moment someone is accused by the government or prosecuted for treason or for any related offence, like aiding the enemy. If the charge is proven against the one accused, he will face the music on his own and we, the people, will go back to our own affairs.

The Inspector-General of Police some time last month declared certain financial institutions and civil society organisations of being in league with the Shabaab and he gave them two days to prove to his satisfaction that they were not in league with the Shabaab. This was intended to be the first salvo in freezing the bank accounts of these organisations. In typical Kenyan fashion, we have not followed up on whether the bank accounts of the declared entities were ever frozen, and if they were, which ones' officials will be prosecuted for aiding and abetting an enemy of Kenya.

That is how the situation prevailed until a government functionary decided to take on the Norwegian Embassy and the Norwegian ambassador to Kenya, who says that Norway will keep funding an organisation that happens to be one against whom the Inspector-General had accused of colluding with the Shabaab.

Unless a prosecution and a conviction have already taken place in secret, which would be the definition of a kangaroo court, no proof has been adduced that demonstrates that the Norwegian Embassy, the Norwegian ambassador and this organisation have conspired to send money to the Shabaab and that that money has been used to launch attacks in Kenya by the Shabaab. We are asked to take the Inspector-General and this other functionary at their word.

There was a time when Kenyans willingly went along with everything their government told them. This is not to say that Kenyans believed their government without reservation. Anyone who thinks that is living in a world of fantasy. Kenyans do not have fond memories of the "long arm of the law" and they were very, very careful about what they voiced their scepticism. 

If the government declared someone to be a financier of the Shabaab or that it was doing so in cahoots with a foreign power, only the foolhardy would pooh-pooh such a declaration. The long arm of the law would mean long hours, days or months in dark basements with electrodes, car batteries and genitalia forming part of the experience. Those days are over; we now have to contend with the impotence of accusation-by-hashtag in an environment where it is the agents of the "long arm of the law" who are more likely to be in league with the Shabaab than an embassy or an NGO.

The government and its agents suffer from a legitimacy crisis complicated by a great trust deficit. We have accepted the reality that our government has one or two rotten tomatoes. We have accepted, too, that there are many well-meaning and dedicated officers in the government. But the overweening secrecy surrounding things that affect us intimately means that every time a new hashtag-accusation is posted online, our initial instinct will be to scoff at it, ridicule it and declare it to be a Houdini-like distraction because something sinister is being undertaken in our name.