That barrel!

Henry Okullu. I disagreed with him on the sex education stance that he took. But I had absolutely no doubt he was a man of great conviction, probity and a depth of honesty that inspired one to public service. Alexander Muge. If you doubted the depth of his feelings for the marginalised, then yours is a heart made up of cold carara marble. David Gitari and Timothy Njoya remain consciences of the nation, reminding you that the Church once stood for something.

These days, and I challenge you to use a more apposite metaphor, the Church - specifically, the modern Kenyan church leadership - has its pants around its ankles, it's bent over a barrel and it is shamelessly enjoying the ardent and unlubricated carnal attentions of Kenya's leadership classes. Allow me to be a bit more profane.

When a businessman-preacher was accused of causing the death of a motorist, he did not do the normal pastor thing. He did not present himself to the police. He did not offer free and unfettered access to his property, including his motor vehicles. He did not offer prayer for the soul of the departed. He ran. He hid. He obstructed the course of justice. He prayed for death and destruction for those who even countenanced that he could be responsible for the traffic offence. He hired a famous criminal defence lawyer. And he lied, and lied, and lied.

In this case he called on the assistance of the Inspector-General of Police who, in their parlance, swung into action, offering explanations and rationalisations for what might have happened. Then the ungrateful cockroaches that are Kenyans took to the internet, uncovering witnesses from the dark places they had crawled into to hide and they shamelessly exposed the lies of the pastor and his friends. The Inspector-General was forced by an uncharacteristically overzealous TV reporter and a rabble-rousing online horde to, Pilate-like, wash his hands of the whole affair. He threw the pastor under the Director of Public Prosecutions' bus and let his own police officers to stew in their own juices for getting him mixed up with the shady man of the cloth.

What I found rather curious is that the businessman-pastor's friends in the political trenches seemed to have developed a bit of amnesia everytime cameras and microphones neared them; sugar barons, sugar cartels, sugar imports...all things sugary seemed to animate them more. Their businessman-pastor friend had become a nettle and they didn't want to catch an unsightly itch.

They needn't have worried. They will never be the politician dog being wagged by the businessman-pastor tail. When it comes to delivering strokes, the politician dog will never find itself over a barrel, no matter what self-righteous and uncharacteristically overzealous TV show hosts think. For example, parliamentarians, who in December were throwing punches and panties at each other in Parliament over a "draconian piece of legislation," have just ganged up in the spirit of bi-partisan comity, to enact a "piece of legislation" that grants them immunity for anything done in good faith while in the course of their parliamentary duties. Then they went to church and got a businessman-pastor to lay his hands on them in prayer. Who has who over a barrel?

Someone asks where the Henry Okullu, Alexander Muge, Timothy Njoya and David Gitari of today are? Look no further than the recesses of your memory. And weep in shame.