We are becoming more American - meaning, we are more and more like the demented citizens of the United States - and it is none other than Johnstone Muthama who proves this for all the world to see. Mr Muthama, Machakos's senator, made his money in gemstones, running profitable gemstone operations in Kenya and Tanzania. He is nobody's fool. Yet when he opens his mouth, there are many who cringe, look away and pretend that they are in some nightmare.
He has aligned himself to losing presidential campaigns for the past decade, claiming that his has always been a principled stand for the sake of progress on the bread-and-butter issues that are of intimate concern to the Great Unwashed. However, to some, it seems that Mr Muthama is slowly losing his marbles. What he said on the dais at the Uhuru Park about the President of Kenya and the Cabinet Secretary for Devolution and Planning will go down in history as one of the crassest, ill-conceived things ever uttered by one who should be an honourable and respected member of society.
In a pluralistic democratic polity, unanimity is a rare luxury; disenchantment, disaffection and disagreement are frequent bedfellows in political environments where every voice must be heard. This does not mean that the crudest epithets that receive the ululation of the masses equally receive the masses' endorsement. Mr Muthama has overestimated his esteem among the hoi polloi. He will no doubt be deaf to the silent groans of the long suffering; teachers and their charges will not celebrate Mr Muthama's crude innuendo. They will deprecate it, in their own fashion.
The President and the Cabint Secretary may not be your idea of devoted public servants, but it is foolish to take, especially of a symbol such as the president, such liberties as Mr Muthama did. We are not the citizens of the USA, where political, racial and class divides are so deep they can never be bridged. We are Kenya and despite the burden of our tortured and tortuous political past, we have never seen ourselves in the same divisive light, save in the past decade.
Some will point to the land clashes of 1992, the ethnic clashes of 1997 and the post-election violence of 2007 as proof that my rose-hued eye-wear needs adjustment. Bear with me. We sill lived with the idea of Kenya as ours, with the people on one side and the wabenzi on the other. We all knew who the wabenzi were and what they did to become the plutocrat they were; none of it was good. Many descriptions were used to describe them: cowboy contractors; suppliers of air; briefcase companies. These were the elite cliques that fed off the presidential trough, that had been feeding off the presidential trough since 1963, and had no shame about their corrupt, corruptive and corrupting natures.
These were not our people. For that we had Henry Okullu, Alexander Muge, Timothy Njoya, David Gitari, Davida Lamba, Wangari Maathai, Whispers, Maddo, Gitobu Imanyara, Willy Mutunga...Our people were intelligent; they had no need to dip long fingers into the public purse, surreptitiously taking what belonged to us, the long suffering great unwashed. Mr Muthama was never, could never be one of us. The crude language he has adopted since realising that his side will always come a cropper is proof that he was never one of us and still isn't.
It is a canon of mature political systems that the political battle is won or lost depending on whether the belligerents are intelligent and, crucially, have the people on their side. It is never a crude contest between fat wallets. If all Mr Kenyatta needed was a fat wallet to be president, he would have won handily in 2002. Mr Muthama misses this crucial point. If he cannot see that no matter how mistaken he thinks they were, over six million Kenyans voted for Mr Kenyatta in 2013. They chose him. They did not choose Mr Muthama's champion. And with his crude remarks last week, Mr Muthama has all but guaranteed that they never will.
No comments:
Post a Comment