Look how far we done fell

What is your relationship to your leader? Are you there just to follow orders, or are you ever proactive? Do you have heartfelt alignment with your leader around a shared purpose? Do you ever come up with your own ideas or contributions for the common good? Are you positive and upbeat about the direction of the group? Do you build your own skills and competencies or do you always wait for them to be handed down? - Sunny Bindra (We spend so much time on leaders. What about followers?)

There are no naturally-occurring vacuums on this planet. The national ethos when it comes to leadership and followership demonstrates the interconnectedness of things. One reinforces the other. Bad leaders are often the result of bad followers and bad followers are the result of bad leaders. But it is not all a binary arrangement: it is how we end up with outliers in life.

A series of decisions were incrementally reinforced and ended up defining the nature of our relationships to our leaders, whether in families, private organisations or Government. One of those decisions was to allow lies to slide. In families, children are taught that lies are wrong. In many families, children are punished when they lie. But children are not blind; they see the lies that many adults in their families engage in on a daily basis, and how the adults justify those lies. Children witness the hypocrisy and adapt to it; they learn how to lie without being caught in the lie, and to justify their underhandedness, just like the adults in their lives.

The same is true of organisations. Lies at the top will be reflected in lies at the bottom. If you have been to a large garage and been offered a "discount" by the mechanic that is not reflected on the worksheet signed of on the boss, then you know this to be true - and a reflection of the trickery the boss engages in with his suppliers and other stakeholders. If you've witnessed the minister of faith preaching about marital fidelity while he seduces members of this congregation, you know that truth-telling, regardless of context, is no longer admirable.

When it comes to Government, the evidence is manifest. Take public transport as an example. You must have seen the hundreds of unroadworthy PSVs that clog the streets. Or the sub-standard multi-billion shillings roadworks that don't survive first contact with rains. They are a manifestation of the lies government officials tell to each other and to the people they serve. They are manifestations of the lies that are accepted among government officials and by us, the people they serve. It is no longer fashionable to call out lies and liars. We mostly go along to get along. No fuss, no muss. Liwe liwalo.

Our relationships are but on lies. It is the best explanation for why we seem incapable of being good followers or choosing good leaders. We turn blind eyes to how so and so became a billionaire because we want to follow the same malign path to great wealth. We turn blind eyes to his so and so stays at the top of the parliamentary establish because we wish to employ the same tricks - bribery, ethnic jingoism, violence - to ascend to the same heights as he. If a few people get injured, maimed or killed, so what? No one is saying anything about it so why should I?

Over the next six months, men and women who have pretended to be paragons of virtue will reveal their true colours. Some have already done so. They will reveal that lies don't bother them; that greed doesn't bother them; that murder, violence and mayhem are their stock-in-trade. Some will be offered national platforms to share their destructive agendas. Some will manipulate social media platforms. Some will assiduously support them. The vast majority of us - silent, morose, cowed, afraid, traumatised - will watch and seethe and pick the wrong side. The few voices of conscience still willing to speak out will be suppressed. Look how far we done fell.

They are called lies

The fundamental question that arises is how we ought to regulate fake news without limiting free speech outside the provisions of the Constitution. In an electioneering period, free political speech is critical. Should we even think about regulating fake news? Who even decides what fake news is and what it is not? - Mugambi Laibuta (The Fake News Pandemic)

"Fake news" is a handy euphemism for "lies". Once you make that conceptual link, it becomes apparent that it is here to stay. Humans have lied for as long as humans have had speech. Humans will continue to lie so long as lying confers an advantage of one over another. Governments lie to other governments. Governments lie to their citizens. Government officials lie to each other as they lie to civilians. It is not a pandemic; it is a design feature of humanity.

In answer to Mr Mugambi's question, no, we shouldn't think about regulating fake news aka lying except in a very narrow sense. Perjured testimony in court should be punished, for instance. Lying on governmental documents - tax returns, say - should attract stiff penalties. Lies by one person about another that cause harm should be the subject of private litigation, not criminal prosecution. It is not the place of Government to say whether or not lies between private parties are good or bad. The proponents of criminal defamation should, instead, be champions of the "I'll see you in court" culture. Suits for damages should determine the price one must pay for lying about someone else.

Mr Mugambi concludes by saying, "While there may be tools available to combat fake news, they are not widely deployed in Kenya. Perhaps we should focus on the effects of the fake news and not the contents of the fake news?" As a child, the consequences of lying were well-known. While it was not uncommon for adults to come to fisticuffs over lies told of or about them, the more socially-acceptable tools for dealing with liars included ostracisation. It was a shameful thing to be shunned for lying. Social institutions - faith and academic institutions, places of work, social clubs and peer group organisations, and the like - played a vital role in dealing with liars and mitigating the effects of their lies. Hard as it may be to believe, even political parties had processes for weeding out flagrant and egregious liars.

But today, all these social institutions accept lying from their most prominent members. I'm a member of the Law Society of Kenya. An inactive one, but that is neither here nor there. A prominent member of my Society lied about the source of an article he wrote for our journal. He lied when he was found out. He lied when he was asked to properly attribute the source of the contents of the article. He kept on lying unto the moment he was forced by a court of law to acknowledge his lie. What I found distasteful is that he did not face any sanctions from the Society. He remains a member in good standing of our professional association. He continues to appear in public without the shame of his lying hanging over him. Besides the attribution he was forced to make by the court, he has not faced any social or professional consequences for his lying. And if it hadn't been for the aggrieved party, our journal, which failed to even notice the blatant academic thieving he had engaged in, would have happily continued to celebrate him as a valued contributor.

This kind of social acceptance of lying is now prevalent in all spheres. There's a minister of faith who has lied repeatedly about a fatal road traffic accident he caused due to his reckless and dangerous driving. The pews in his church building continued to be filled until the day freedom of association was severely restricted on account of the Covid-19 pandemic. There is a senior government official who has lied about a harmful policy his ministry is pursuing that will lead to millions of Kenyan children being offered extremely substandard education. He is still in office. A senior member of the Cabinet promised to publish the contracts of a highly controversial public infrastructure works. Three years later, the contracts remain hidden behind a veil of secrecy.

It is impossible to address the consequences of lying when every social institution that can do something about liars is infiltrated and run by liars. What we should do is empower individuals as much as possible to make it easier for them to seek damages for lies that cause them harm. What Government should do is punish people who lie in official documents - tax returns, for example - or lie in official governmental proceedings - such as perjury in court. What we must also do, though I don't know if it can be done, is to restore social institutions to perform the tasks they used to perform with regards to liars. For example, faith organisations should not give liars in their midst platforms to spread their lies. Professional associations should revoke professional titles and rewards they have conferred on liars in their midst. But most of all, we should call "fake news" what it is: LIES. Properly naming the thing is the first step to dealing with the thing.