Gaslighting won't work

When doubts are raised about the Chosen One at this year's general election, the doubts are not always motivated by animus. There are those among us who do not appreciate the hectoring tone adopted by Lil J, as some Twitter wag has taken to calling Junet Mohamed. Nor are we amused by the constant stream of twitter diatribe from the one Miguna Miguna calls the Fat Toad of Buffalo. As we have demonstrated on countless occasions, Kenyans are not morons. We have not been bamboozled in the political choices we have made since the halcyon days of "Yote Yawezekana Bila Moi". So the leadership of the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Tours and Safaris should stop with the lectures and subliminal intimidation tactics.

The same goes for the putative saviours of the Republic in the Kenya Kwanza Wheelbarrow CBO. Just because Rigathi claims that he and his compadres have been he victims of tyranny does not erase the fact that Rigathi was a District Officer and that his preferred candidate was an energetic promoter of Youth for Kanu '92 (Y92) and that by the time they were done with the first multiparty elections, inflation was out of hand, at least one opposition presidential candidate was dead, land clashes had displaced tens of thousands of Kenyans, and Nchi Ya Kitu Kidogo had become a painful reality.

The point of my screed is that the rival political campaigns must take heed that Kenyans will decide; it is not boardroom mechanisms that will bring forth the Fifth President of the Republic. No amount of maneuvering and manipulating and intimidating will make Kenyans forget the stakes of the general election. If Baba is the choice of the majority, so be it. If Wheelbarrownomics is the winning formula, the ballots cast will be proof of concept. But enough with the gaslighting.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?

Knowing what we know, and seeing what we see, I am baffled by the lengths that senior members of the Azimio-One Kenya Tours and Safaris will go to set their house on fire three months before the general elections, and thereby jeopardising Mr Odinga's chances of becoming The Fifth. First it was the ham-fisted wooing of Mr Musyoka, SC, away from the Kenya Kwanza wheelbarrow. You got the impression that Mr Musyoka, SC, had been mugged on his way to City Market to buy fish for the weekend. There was little in the way of finesse as he finally joined the Azimio agglomeration. And it got worse from there.

There were unpleasant accusations that none of the signatories had read the coalition agreement. There were hilarious snafus as premature whinging over Deputy President slots were mouthed in disparate barazas before lacklustre crowds. The impression that the mugging had morphed into a hostage crisis has only gained credence in recent days with the appointment of a panel to choose Mr. Odinga's running mate. The Azimio mouthpiece, a USA-based law professor, and an excitable Migori MP have done much to undermine confidence in Mr Musyoka's camp that he is, indeed, the chosen one, demanding that he shall face the same panel as other worthy candidates.

A Kitui MP, and his Ukambani cheering squad, have lambasted the panel-beating taking place in the search for a running mate. They are reinforced in their intransigence by an impeached ex-jailbird seeking gubernatorial glory in County 001. What they have done, in a weird sort of way, is to affirm how low one of Mwai Kibaki's Vice-Presidents has sunk in the political premier league. He can only trade on his glory days. He has little to show for that glory. If he isn't careful, the unfair tag of "has been" will wrap itself around his neck, albatross-like, and strangle his political career like a boa strangling a wee lamb.

I spent a few days with my very aged grandmother in Sawagongo. We ate fish and kuon. We drank copious amounts of clay-pot-chilled water (goodness, the humidity of Gem is something else). And we flirted with the heresy that the Wheelbarrow Acquisition and Distribution CBO may offer a better future because, despite it all, it has a less foot-in-the-mouth approach to things (sexist and misogynist rants of its Cosmo Chois notwithstanding) than Azimio-One Kenya Tours and Safaris.

I can understand the desperation of the Senior Counsel to be on the ballot one more time. He has. nothing to fall back on if he is left out in the cold. I can understand why his acolytes are threatening mass walkouts out of the coalition. They are only relevant if their fantasy of political supremacy is affirmed by the choice of the Senior Counsel as running mate. But politics based on desperation has little chance of persuading the voters to cast their ballots for them. It is, frankly, a little off-putting if not downright creepy. Sadly, though, the one Miguna Miguna calls the Toad of Buffalo cannot see his nose for the world. He will continue to pen increasingly ill-advised screeds. He will continue to tweet like a teenager. He is a harbinger of the drubbing that the Azimio Tours and Safaris is inviting.

May Toto win bigly

Bomet County made me so happy. Regardless of the final outcome on 9th August, the members of the United Democratic Alliance of Bomet County nominated Linet "Toto" Chepkorir, a precocious, confident and talented twenty-four year old, to stand in the election for woman representative at the forthcoming general election. That made be happy. She is proof positive that when given an inch, the youth will not wait to be invited to the table; they will take the inch, go the mile and seize the opportunity. I just hope she doesn't behave like the moron from Meru who got sidelined by a flashy new SUV.

I hope she wins. I hope she prevails over old and experienced political hands. I don't care that she knows little about "national politics". That shit doesn't matter. She is intelligent. She will learn the ropes fast enough. After all, it is by being underestimated and dismissed by the more experienced hands that she has demonstrated her political mettle. Why shouldn't we think that she will manage the poisoned waters of Nairobi?

I left the label of "youth" a while ago; I am not in the same league as Ms Chekorir. She is miles ahead of me in offering leadership to a nation starved of it. By all accounts, she has been a leader for as long as she has had the opportunity. Kenya needs more young people like her to step up, and push out the old guard. My prayer is that she makes it to the National Assembly. My prayer is that she carries forward the torch that was left to die down by the co-option of the firebrands of the Second Liberation. My prayer is that she kicks butt.

It is not a race thing

"a race thing"

I don't know what to is about the troubles that we face that automatically leads us to assume that "Black people lack something". One of my seniors at the Bar is afflicted by this syndrome. Some of the more libertarian-minded among us think that Black Africans are incapable of appreciating the liberty that caucasians seem to take for granted. In any case, these Black people express an inferiority complex that is both baffling and complex.

I have had the privilege of visiting the United States and Australia; I stayed for three months in Accra and have made several forays to Arusha, Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar and Kigali. My visits to Washington DC and Sydney invited the casual racism that seems to pervade those world capitals, while my stay in Dar es Salaam and Accra was like a coming home event. I was among my people. I was among friends. That is not the same in some bits of my country; I can count the number of times my visits to Malindi or Mombasa have not been accompanied by casual racist bullying even by fellow Black Kenyans.

But at no point has it ever occurred to me that Black Kenyans were in any way inferior to the apparently "developed" Europeans and North Americans. Our economies and politics appear to be shambolic, but can you imagine trying to access basic health services in a US hospital? Your Blackness, successful or not, will not insulate you from the scorn of the British upturned nose. Witness the degrading language used to describe Rishi Sunak, the British chancellor of the exchequer.

Kenya, and many African countries, face many structural challenges. But these challenges are not as a result of the fact that we suffer congenital racial defects. That is not a question that should occur to us. We can point to the corruption that is supercharged by the presence of corrupt Europeans and North American government officials and multinational CEOs. Or the flawed economic and financial policies that underpin the global economic and financial order overseen by the twin succubi of the World Bank and IMF.

I promise you, brethren, that being Black is not a defect. It is many things, but it is not a defect. Don't fall for the trick of associating Black with evil, with bad, with wrong-ness. I can't articulate why I know Black is not wrong; I feel it in my bones and in the depths of my soul. I am not racially inferior to anyone. My people are not racially inferior.

IT. IS. NOT. A. RACE. THING.

Pray for me, Argentina

We prize seniority in my profession but I think that things have changed so much that seniority is almost meaningless. One of my seniors - he was called to the Bar more than a decade before I was - loves his senior status so much that he thinks that it confers on him great technical skill. If it were skills as a litigator, I would concede without a fuss that he stands heads and shoulders above many seasoned practitioners of those dark arts. If it were skills as an arranger of complex mergers or acquisitions, there are few who can hold a candle to him. However, when it comes to the drudgery of legislative drafting - the ouija-board-reading of legislative intent and the parsing of constitutional and legal language - the poor man is a minnow in a pool of piranha.

I mention all this to show the pernicious impact that seniority-above-all-else has on effective work. Many "seniors" are blinded to the malodorousness of their decision-making; the infallibility they believe seniority has conferred on them leads them to make professional and personal choices that often prove calamitous.

At work, I have been grappling with this dilemma. I am presented, more frequently these days, with legislative drafting work of such mind-numbing, cretinous dullardness that I must believe that I am being punk'd. There is no way senior members of the Bar would append their names to what appears to be the product of a political backwater like the dark smoke-filled backrooms of Kenya's political parties. The kind of schlock that is presented for "perusal, concurrence and approval" presents such grave risks to the Republic that I fear I may say something so impertinent and presumptuous I may yet destroy the government of the day.

It all boils down to the Seniority Syndrome and the fear of underlings to point out, quite rightly in my view, the utter nakedness of our seniors. What the seniors can't or don't care to see is how time-consuming it is to wind back their outrageous legislative suggestions and the rancour it engenders between teams - TEAMS! - of opposing underlings. Quite frankly, it is mentally draining and psychologically damaging for the less sanguine among us.

I had naively believed that the "retirement" of the more publicly reckless members of my poisonous profession would have calmed the waters. I was so very wrong. They left behind minor turd mountains in their wake that are now being trudged through the corridors of the State looking for professionals' desks to despoil. It is an election years and every bad legislative idea is being revived in the hopes that the distracted members of the National Assembly and Senate won't notice. Civil society has been so undermined by the refusal by its Robert Mugabes to retire that it is doubtful that there's a modern-day Mwalimu Mati to poke giant holes in those terrible, horrible, no good, very bad ideas.

So I sit and stare at these pages, praying for the ground to open up and swallow the authors of my distress, but realising, with despair, that those whom the Gods wish to punish, they first introduce to members of the Senior Council Bar. This is my personal hell. Pray for me, Argentina.

Lessons from the USA

What do you remember of the process that led to the appointment of Chief Justice Martha Koome? Do you remember how many applicants there were for the job? Do you remember that they were “interviewed” by the Judicial Service Commission or that they were “vetted” by the National Assembly? The interviews and vetting of the ultimate nominee were televised but I can honestly declare that I don’t remember much about it. Maybe the allegations of plagiarism leveled against an applicant by her students and the smug arrogance of another applicant, jacket off, that had the whiff of “Mta-do?” come to mind. Maybe they don’t.

In contrast, even from 8,000km away, I can recall key moments in the vetting of Associate Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett by the United States Senate. Despite the obvious histrionics of the highly motivated partisans, the public vetting of the justices revealed a considerable amount about their judicial principles and philosophies. As has the most recent vetting of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. The degree to which their judicial records have been publicly scrutinized even before they sat before the US Senate was illuminating and when they were sworn in, it was clear where they stood on key constitutional and legal principles. I challenge you to say with confidence what Chief Justice Koome’s or Supreme Court Judge William Ouko’s constitutional and legal viewpoints are. (Both were appointed to the Supreme Court at the same time.)

Instead, the main topic of national discussion remains who will be president and even this discussion is not held on the basis of the political philosophies of the candidates rather than their perceived ability to mobilize tribal and ethnic vote banks in their favor. How the US chooses its judges is filled with political spectacle but the spectacle is not an end in itself; it serves the valuable task of indicating to a high degree of confidence whether or not their judicial officials can be trusted to do their job with impartiality and fairness. How Kenyans choose their Supreme Court judges and, by extension, their presidential candidates does not inspire any kind of confidence. Rather, it reinforces the feelings of nihilism that seem to pervade so much of our lives these days.

In the coming week, the US will have a new, highly respected and eminently qualified, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States while Kenya will be kept in the dark on whether the Supreme Court of the Republic of Kenya has been able to answer a simple question: what is the Basic Structure Doctrine and does it apply to the Constitution of Kenya. The High Court and Court of Appeal were able to answer this question, but it is only the Supreme Court that has the power to declare whether or not the lower courts were right. Instead of framing the question in this way, Kenyans have been encouraged to focus on two irrelevant and interrelated questions: does Kenya need the recommendations of the BBI and does the next president have an obligation to implement the BBI recommendations or not?

In my opinion, BBI (as catch all for the constitutional review issues raised for the purposes of securing the election of Raila Odinga and the continued engagement of Uhuru Kenyatta in national governance) is the wrong question. We must settle for posterity the question of the nature of our constitution’s basic structure, how it limits the procedure of constitutional amendment, and how the people are to be involved and engaged in the process of its amendment. For that question to be settle, other political and constitutional questions must be settled as well: is the president a king? Can parliament ignore its core constituencies? Can the judiciary take an activist posture in defense of the constitution’s basic structure? Instead, tragically, we are entertained by yellow-clad politicians parading themselves like TV starlets.

The way of the future

The clock keeps ticking inexorably towards 9th August 2022 when Kenyans in their millions will be asked to cast their ballots in favor of six different categories of candidates. The office that has elicited widespread excitement is the presidency, the highest political office in Kenya. The person to be nominated as a member of a county assembly in each of the counties does not elicit any attention by the chattering classes. We have been corralled into thinking of the presidency as the be all and end all of the 2022 general election.

Towards this end, the horse race has boiled down into a two-horse race: the incumbent Deputy President and the former Prime Minister. The former has had a spectacular falling out with his boss, who has called him epithets that raise the question as to why he continues to hold his job. The latter has kept his hopes of victory alive through four separate electoral disasters, and this time around, he has the president in his corner.

Our obsession with the presidency has hidden something more profound, something that was hinted at in the selection of the deputy president as the flag bearer of his rebel alliance: the complete absence and marginalization of young people from all levels of power. The upper echelons of institutions of power: political parties, faith ministries, corporate boards, civil society organizations, trades union, and the like are dominated by old men. Young people, women, members of marginalized communities and persons with disabilities are notable by their almost total absence in these offices. What’s worse are the platitudes that keep being repeated: the youth are the future of this country.

A common refrain is that the aged must make way for the young. What is never canvassed is the harsh reality: no one gives up power without a fight. Makau Mutua will not give up his chairmanship of the Kenya Human Rights Commission. Raila Odinga will not give up his leadership of the Orange Democratic Movement Party. James Mwangi will not give up the CEO’s office at Equity Bank. Bishop Muheria will continue to fulminate against hot-button cultural issues for as long as he white-knuckles his grip on the Arch-Diocese of Nyeri. Old men are here to stay and the only way they will leave is if they are pushed out by young people.

Young people must abandon the ayomyom philosophy they have been spoon-fed for the past thirty years. Young people must stop waiting to be chosen. Some of us have had opportunities to lead that we have shirked. We refuse to take up leadership in the home, in our communities, in our faith ministries or in our places of work because we fear failure. We have gotten used to “success” as the only metric that matters. We are no longer permitted to trial-and-error our way through life like our parents did. It is either success or bust. This has crippled the inter-generational transfer of power and wealth.

Old and no-longer-imaginative men have taken advantage. They have learnt the art of dishing out morsels to young people. There is a presidential candidate who has become notorious for distributing wheelbarrows to young people paid for out of billions that he cannot account for. What is amazing is that there are notable human rights defenders who see nothing wrong in defending this short-sighted and reckless scheme. Another p[residential candidate is notable for promising “free” money to young people out of taxes paid by the same young people or from the sweat of those young people. Listening to the two, it is obvious why tracking polls indicate that millions of young people are ambivalent about turning up at the polls in August.

But young people who should know better have done little to wrest leadership from the ancien regime. The CEO of the KCB Group has failed to mentor a younger person to succeed him such that his board has allegedly handed him a secret one-year extension to his contract. The presiding bishop emeritus of the Christ is the Answer Ministry has refused to fade into the background, popping up, on request and unilaterally, at major CITAM events. The Secretaries General of Kenya’s political parties are often young men, but they operate as vassals of their older, slower bosses rather than as the vanguard of the youth that seek political office. That dinosaurs like Musikari Kombo and Dalmas Otieno still have ambitions of high political office is an indictment of the young people who oversee operations of political parties.

Things will not change unless we abandon - truly abandon - business-as-usual. Kenya is ripe for a youth revolution. All it needs is the right spark and it will sweep away the old, decrepit and corrupt old guard. That spark, sadly, will not be lit by young people who have been taught to believe that wheelbarrows and six-thousand-shillings stipends are the way of the future.

Things will not change

This is the much that I found out about the events of that Friday. A foreign diplomat driving an SUV hit and seriously injured a commercial motorcycle rider. She left, maybe fled, the scene of the accident. She was stopped by a mob of other motorcyclists, who may or may not have included commercial motorcycle riders. A policeman attempted to ascertain the nature of the accident, the extent of injury and damage, and who may or may not have been culpable. The policeman failed to control the now-unruly mob. The foreign diplomat was sexually assaulted. Kenyan social media found out, freaked out and the internal security ministry got involved. The president ordered a crackdown and for five or so days, police arrested motorcycle riders on any pretext, detained their motorcycles, demanded tens of thousands of shillings in unspecified fines, and prosecuted a few for the assault on the foreign diplomat and others for traffic related offenses. It was all so familiar.

I have little love for commercial motorcycle riders, even the ones who provide me with efficient services. My experiences with them have been mixed at best. I have only ridden pillion once and it is not an experience I will repeat so long as they operate the same way they do today. My experiences, though, are not unique.

If you have had occasion to drive, be driven or walk into and out of the Nairobi Central Business District, you will have encountered commercial motorcycle riders. If they are not ferrying goods or passengers to and from various addresses, you will find them parked in strategic places, often on pavements, or roundabouts, bus stops, double-parked in car parks, and in the middle of busy intersections and roundabouts. They occupy spaces that are reserved for other road users without apology or care.

When they are in motion, they ignore all traffic rules, including traffic lights, lanes, or direction of travel. They will overtake on blind corners, on the wrong side, in the wrong lane. They will speed through red lights. They will speed through pavements. The majority of commercial motorcycle riders swill ride without any form of safety equipment, neither for themselves nor their pillion riders. On a few occasions, they are used to ferry violent criminal offenders and petty purse snatchers. In one hilarious video doing the rounds, a policeman loses his mobile to a motorcycle-borne thief, and they make their way off by driving into oncoming traffic on the wrong side of the road at high speed.

When they are involved in accidents, their compatriots will swarm the scene of the accident in solidarity with one of their own. As the unfortunate foreign diplomat discovered, if the accident is with a woman motorist, the outcome can sometimes be tragic. On other occasions they have set motor vehicles on fire, and violently assaulted other motorists such that they required medical care or hospitalization. It is not too far a stretch to state that if a motorist and a commercial motorcycle rider had an accident, the situation is more likely than not to turn violent.

As with the rest of the traffic system we have, motorcycle riders have become a law unto themselves. In my opinion, this is because of the remarkable accommodations we have made for other kinds of road users: the president, members of his cabinet, senior members of the public service, parliamentarians, well-connected businessmen, ministers of faith, and the like, are allowed to flout all kinds of traffic rules. The CBD is a canvas of the traffic offences that the police allow to be perpetrated on a daily basis. Therefore, it was wholly shortsighted to target only commercial motorcycle riders when the rest of the motoring public was allowed to carry on as before. This kind of discrimination is why there are those conspiracy theorists who think that the crackdown was meant to create a crisis that politicians could solve rather than take the first steps to addressing the deteriorated traffic system we have at present.

I have no faith that things will improve or change. I know that for a few days, commercial motorcycle riders and pillion riders will wear helmets, reflector jackets and other safety gear. I know that they will obey some, if not most, of the traffic rules. They will be respectful at accident scenes. They will restrain themselves from resorting to violence and base instincts at accident scenes. But this will not last long. In time, the police and their commanders and the worthies responsible for policy will move on to more important things - like the 2022 general election - and the traffic “sector” will revert to default settings. Only the naive think that things will change.

Kizuri chajiuza

There is something unseemly about civil servants seeking praise for their work from the hosts of TV shows. I don't know if children are still taught the Kiswahili saying, "Kizuri chajiuza, kibaya chajitembeza", which I always thought to mean that if one does good, praises will come unbidden but the poor worker always tries to tell a better story (about himself) than there is to be told. If they aren't, I hope the Kiswahili teachers will bring back the saying and emphasise the moral value of doing good without expecting praise.

When a senior civil servant says "We work until 5 a.m.", one has to wonder how badly he and his colleagues do their work to justify routinely working till the wee hours of the morning and "Operating on one or two hours of sleep". Or why he would say it with that tone of false modesty that is obviously calculated to elicit a bit of praise.

The affairs of State (and government) are difficult to manage at the best of times. They require a certain measure of dedication and sacrifice at the highest levels. The efforts of the diligent public servant are rarely praised and quite often misrepresented. If one went into publics vice for fame and glory, they should have chosen the elected route and not the career one (though career elected officials are to be expected, every now and then). The affairs of State require one to know what they want to do, how they want to do it, and whom they need in their corner to get it done. In Kenya, Mwai Kibaki satisfied all three requirements to various degrees of success and his achievements are truly, his achievements. Even with the albatross of the Post-Election Violence hanging around his neck, he could creditably demonstrate what he had achieved in what turned out to be a thankless job.

His successor will not be remembered with fondness by posterity. He may have known what he wanted to achieve, but it is plain as the nose on your face that he didn't know how to go about it or whom he needed to get it done. The Big Four Agenda is a pale imitation of Kenya Vision 2030. Its Universal Health Care is notable for the fiasco that was the Medical Equipment Leasing Scheme and a cruel reminder of "Mafia House". Food security has been shown to be a sham in every year of his reign by the spectre of famine that has stalked the former Northern Frontier and the hardship areas of the former Coast Province. The unremitting high cost of electricity (because of ill-conceived power purchase agreements with well-connected buccaneers and brigands) has undermined the goal of manufacturing and job creation. The "10,000 affordable housing units" he has promised time and again has been greatly undershot.

The men and women labouring on his administrative agenda till 5 a.m. don't seem to have achieved much as they burn the candle at both ends. And those among them seeking elective office are the ones most interested in telling tall tales about how hard they work. They must be deathly afraid of being labelled "failures" by the people from whom they will seek votes.

This shouldn't come as a surprise. We all have to manage our press to minimise bad stories and emphasise good ones. But when we substitute good work with good press, work inevitably suffers. These people are obsessed with PR and it shows. The work they do is guided by eliciting positive PR, rather than positive outcomes. They are very good at branding, but the branding is mere camouflage for projects that have not been fully thought through at a policy level. They are the true manifestation of "kizuri chajiuza, kibaya chajitembeza".

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.

The Great Potato War

When my KCSE results arrived, and the shock of having passed had receded, my parents and I arrived at a decision that would have profound consequences on my future. Because of my less-than-reliable views on hard work, it was decided that the deep end of adulthood was what I needed and I was, by mutual agreement, despatched to the Indian subcontinent to read law. That is where I encountered the US multinationals that got me hooked on junk: Macdonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). The Maharajah Mac, dear brothers and sisters, is the heroin of burgers. But this is not the story of my Maharajah Mac pining.

This past week, Kenyans on Twitter, the redoubtable #KOT, waged a war to end all wars against the Kenyan franchisee of KFC over the refusal by the franchisee to source its potatoes from Kenya on the laughable grounds that Kenyans couldn't meet the KFC standard. I am not here to relitigate the finer details of the war, save for one of the issues that cropped up: industrial policy.

I have been privileged to witness the making, unmaking and remaking of various policies. It is far from a pretty sight. Policy-making requires the kind of patient administrative work that the current regime lacks in its senior-most ranks. There are senior government officials who labour mightily under the illusion that all they need to do is snap their fingers, and shillings rain down like manna from heaven - and they consider this the epitome of policy-making. It is how someone can rouse themselves from the comfort of their beds and declare that Kenyans will not access public services unless they are fully vaccinated. And it is this kind of policy-making ignorance that invites the demands that were made last week to "ban the import of frozen potatoes from Egypt".

Policy, generally, is not overly complicated. Industrial policy, as with agricultural policy, on the other hand, can lead one to tear their hair out. There are so many moving parts that coherence is often sacrificed at the altar of political expediency, corruption and bureaucratic laziness. Anyone who has watched as Kenya's sugar industry cratered and billions were wasted on "sugar reforms" will surely admit this to be true. The potato industry seems to be a victim of the same malaise that afflicts sugar, maize, bean and coffee. The current nabobs of the agriculture sector, led by the indefatigable minister, are no longer interested in a coherent agricultural policy and their counterparts in the industrialisation ministry seem powerless to rein in bad policy ideas.

Nothing epitomises the policy incoherence more than the utter failure to scale up market facilities at the local level. If you have had the privilege of passing through Wakulima Market at four in the morning, then you must surely wonder how lorry loads of tomatoes and other agricultural produce end up dumped outside the market because the market does not have bulk cold storage facilities, sixty years after it was established. The same is true nationwide., Indeed, even in the case of NCPB's silos, modernisation seems to have been abandoned and the national silo infrastructure is no longer fit for use.

The continued lack of a coherent and comprehensive policy, one that is founded on the objectives of Kenya Vision 2030, is one more indictment of the current regime that has obsessively built infrastructure whose short-term and long-term economic efficacy is doubtful at best. The billions squandered on floating bridges and last-mile connectivity could have established a robust agriculture infrastructure programme that would have considerably reduced post-harvest agricultural losses and facilitated the development of a vibrant domestic commodities market. The Great Potato War is merely the latest proof of the utter failure of the agriculture sector nawabs.

NMS Must Go

The Environmental Management and Co-ordination Act (No. 8 of 1999) is one of the most mind-numbingly boring pieces of legislation to ever manage from the National Assembly of Kenya. It is written in such a stodgy and turgid style that only a masochist would read it for fun. It's ennui-inducing text notwithstanding, it is a law of the Republic and must be obeyed whenever someone sets out to do a project in Kenya. It binds everyone, regardless of their station in life. Barring the nitpicking of members of my tribe, where it says "shall", it commands one to do or refrain from doing that act.

It states, at section 58(1):

Notwithstanding any approval, permit or license granted under this Act or any other law in force in Kenya, any person, being a proponent of a project, shall before financing, commencing, proceeding with, carrying out, executing or conducting or causing to be financed, commenced, proceeded with, carried out, executed or conducted by another person any undertaking specified in the Second Schedule to this Act, submit a project report to the Authority, in the prescribed form, giving the prescribed information and which shall be accompanied by the prescribed fee.

The Second Schedule classifies projects into low-risk, medium-risk and high-risk.  In my opinion, what is being undertaken in Uhuru Park is a low-risk project (small scale rehabilitation, maintenance and modernization of projects), for which a project report should have been submitted to NEMA and, should NEMA have directed, an EIA should have been undertaken. In flagrant disregard for section 58, none of this was done and it has taken a petition by the Communist Party of Kenya to put a stop to the goings on in Nairobi's largest urban green space.

We have been fed tonnes of propaganda about how military officers are so by-the-book and honest that they will right the developmental ship of state from its dangerously parleys state. I have expressed my scepticism about the soldiers donning mufti and playing at civilian administration. I am not persuaded that soldiers - whose business should be to high wars - are well-suited to the mess coalition-building of varied interests that is necessary to the running of a city or the management of its affairs. Even senior military officers live under the rubric that all orders of their commanders-in-chief must be obeyed, regardless of the constitutional fig leaf of "lawful orders". The general in charge of the Uhuru Park project has not demonstrated a sufficient capability in civilian coalition-building to believe that he is capable of complying with anything other than the direct orders of his commanding officer.

We know enough about the disfunction in NEMA and other regulatory bodies to know that the cost of undertaking any project in Kenya is orders of magnitude higher than it needs to be. The solution, however, is not to undermine the laws of the Republic no matter how noble a project is claimed to be. The Uhuru Park fiasco is proof that military generals lack the creativity needed to undertake any major project in the city. Messrs Sonko and Kidero were terrible governors but they understood the need to consult widely and involve all affected parties when undertaking projects, and when the projects foundered for whatever reason, they adjusted, adapted or pulled out altogether, which is the essential component of democratic development.

The poor man charged with improving physical planning services in Nairobi City is incapable of consulting effectively; has no clue about the political and social impacts of his my-way-or-the-highway approach to leadership; believes that the ends justify unlawful means; and will not admit that he is in waters he can't navigate or that his appointing authority was wrong to appoint him in the first place. The Environment and Land Court may yet reverse its injunction against the Uhuru Park project and if it did, that would be entirely in keeping with the doctrine of the rule of law. The reason why the injunction exists in the first place is that the project proponents in Uhuru Park shat on the rule of law. Whether or not the injunction is lifted, the Nairobi Metropolitan Service cannot continue to operate. It should be disbanded and its officers barred from ever serving in the public service again.

What is left unsaid says it all

We teach our children that violence is not the answer. We, sometimes, reinforce the lesson, with violence. Therein lies irony, but that is not the reason for this post. If there's one lesson that we have taken from years of childhood development studies it is that violence forms a poor foundation for the education and discipline of children. But in situations where time and other resources are scarce, the instinct to chart familiar, violent, paths overwhelms the instinct to spend more time and resources in building new systems for the education and discipline of our children. It is a schizophrenic hypocrisy, of sorts.

I have watched with amazement as the Cabinet Secretary for Education and his internal security counterpart, together with other senior government officials, muse publicly that it is time to reintroduce corporal punishment in schools as one of the solutions for the waves of school unrest and associated cases of arson. Far better thinkers of childhood development can tell you why violent coercive force is no longer the preferred method for educating or disciplining children. I intend to show you why it is wrong for governmental officials to casually and recklessly recommend the usurpation of constitutional prohibitions.

In Kenya, Cabinet Secretaries and Principal Secretaries swear an oath to obey, respect and uphold the Constitution of Kenya and all other laws of the Republic. The Constitution imposes an obligation on all Kenyans to protect children from all forms of violence. In my opinion, this includes protection of children from corporal punishment, which is a form of violence. The Basic Education Act, which is a law of the Republic, states that one of the principles of the provision of basic education is the elimination of  corporal punishment.

The oaths that the Cabinet Secretaries and Principal Secretaries swore means that they cannot casually propose the reintroduction of corporal punishment without first amending the Constitution and repealing the provisions that protect children from any form of violence. Furthermore, they cannot declare that they "do not believe in children's rights", because it would amount to saying that they do not believe in the Bill of Rights, which would bring into question their fitness to continue serving in Government.

I have watched with trepidation as senior members of the Government have swatted away their constitutional obligations whenever it inconvenienced them. A senior member of the police service defied court orders and was convicted of contempt and ordered to serve a term of imprisonment of four years. He has also disobeyed the latest court order. Several Cabinet Secretaries have also been convicted of contempt of court; they have all defied the sanctions imposed on them by the courts. No less than the Chief Justice of kenya has watched as some of his orders are defied by Government officials.

Meanwhile, the police service is wielded as a sledgehammer against the hoi polloi should they deign to set one toe over the line. Quite often, police action in the enforcement of the law ends tragically; men, women, children and infants have died at the hands of police in the enforcement of the law. But when it comes to senior members of the Government, regardless of the scale of their alleged offences, they are treated with kid gloves even as they thumb their noses at the rule of law. This is not a satisfactory way to build a culture of constitutionalism in Kenya. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the true threat to the constitutional order is the reckless disregard for the rule of law by senior members of the Government.

In my opinion, any governmental official who declares that children do not enjoy any constitutional protections is not fit to hold public office; any government official who defies the orders of the courts, is not fit to hold public office; any governmental official who undermines the rule of law in any way must be removed from office and barred from public service forever. But this is half the story, isn't it? The other half is left unsaid because that is what we do and who we are.

Change or die

A video was published on social media showing the exact moment 25 people died. The bus they were traveling in attempted to cross a swollen river at an unsafe drift road crossing. It is reported that the driver of the ill-fated bus hesitated for a long time before being urged forward by his passengers who were on their way to a wedding. It is also reported that some of the passengers argued that God would keep them safe. This terrible tragedy was avoidable.

In the same week, a speeding driver who is suspected to have been driving while drank hit and killed two motorcycle riders. It is reported that the dangerous driver is the son of a senior policeman. It is also reported that police procedures at the scene of a road traffic accident in which fatalities are reported were not followed. The dangerous driver was allowed to leave the scene of the accident without recording a statement. The vehicle that he was driving was not towed to the nearest police station. The policemen at the scene of the accident did not alert anyone about the accident. This tragedy could have been avoided. The events that followed could have been prevented.

There are many things that contribute to the dangerousness of driving on Kenyan roads. Some are highlighted in these tragedies: poor road design; poor mitigation of risks; poor driver training; and abuse of office by privileged road users. Take the manner in which the alleged son of the senior policeman was treated. He is not the first one to get away with traffic offences because of who he is or who he is connected to. It has become an ingrained part of our national DNA that senior government officers (and they friends and families) are not to be strictly bound by the law, even when their actions cause death and serious injury.

We have a word for this: impunity. It pervades every aspect of our lives. It is excused. It is encouraged. And as we have seen, it cause death, injury and destruction on a colossal scale. The single most important contributor to the contempt for the law that infects Kenyans' lives is the impunity of governmental officials, their families and friends. Why should the hoi polloi follow the law when the men and women who have sworn to uphold the law flout it with impunity and protect their friends and family when they flout it? Why should the hoi polloi obey the law when the forces of law and order conspire to defeat the ends of justice when the high and mighty commit offences? If our governmental leaders will not be held to account, if they will conspire with other governmental officials to undermine the law, and thereby defeat the ends of justice while causing death and injury, there is no reasonable cause to believe that the people they govern or lead will do the same. Widespread hypocrisy is simply not a good way to govern. And when it comes to road traffic accidents, fatalities and injuries, this kind of hypocrisy is deadly.

The Kitui tragedy was avoidable and preventable. Avoidable because the driver of the ill-fated bus should have turned back and found an alternative route to his destination and if such a route was not to be found, returned to where the journey began. No amount of exhortations from his passengers should have override his initial instincts to avoid the crossing.

It was preventable if only the crossing had a proper bridge or, if such a bridge was not to be had, a barrier across the crossing during the period the crossing was dangerous to use. One of the episodes on the Australian reality series Outback Truckers shows the lengths local authorise in the Australian bush will go to prevent tragedies on the roads. In this episode, the long-haul trucker comes to a similar drift crossing that is swollen; the river has broken its banks and is swirling over the drift crossing. The local authorities have posted a barrier across it and a notice barring its use. Our trucker is the only one on the road. He chooses safety and finds an alternative route. Our bus driver should have done the same. The Kitui County Government should have posted warnings not to use the crossing.

The Kitui county government's apathy, as that of the roads' authority and National Transport and Safety Authority, are responsible fr the deaths. The bus driver and his passengers are not the only cause of the tragedy. Because no one will truly be held to account for this kind of apathy, it is almost certain that the Kitui county government, the roads' authority and NTSA will not change how they govern the roads; the drift road crossing will remain dangerous when the river waters swell; and eventually, tragedy will strike again. The impunity we have permitted to metastasise when it comes to law enforcement on the roads has infected the design, construction and use of roads. If we don't change, death and injury will continue to stalk us wherever we go.

Untrained, inexperienced, without a plan

It almost always comes as a surprise when a Kenyan will robustly defend under-performers in the public service with a roster of excuses that a child of five will see for what it is: arrant nonsense. My latest encounter is with a man (I will assume it is a man because men will walk through fire for other under-performing men) who can only marvel at the challenges the general in charge of the Nairobi Metropolitan Service has faced as he seeks to bring water services closer to the people.

In response to my observation that the good general is utterly useless due to the image of mikokoteni-borne water vendors plying their trade in the Central Business District, the man could not hold himself back and had to remind me that the general has sunk 300 boreholes in informal settlement. I didn't have the heart to tell him that he had missed the point, especially when we limbered up and declared, "Nairobi cannot be overhauled in two years", completely forgetting that rapid results was what the general promised when he took up this additional duty.

If the general had bothered to ask, he would have been told that water services are not for the unprepared. The redoubtable Martha Karua faced entrenched resistance from cartels and vested interests when she initiated reforms in the water sector. If for nothing else, Ms karma is remembered in Government for the preparations she made for the water reforms, and the skills she demonstrated when she overcame resistance to her form agenda. The general does not have Ms Karua's skills. He may be a hotshot over at the Airforce, but he is woefully out of his depth when it comes tot he delivery of efficient, effective and affordable water services.

It is not unpatriotic to point this out. He is simply not qualified to manage water services. He isn't trained to do so. He has not worked int he water sector. He didn't have a plan to improve water services when he was appointed to his current post. All he had to go on were his prejudices - which are, in fact - the appointing authority's prejudices - when to comes to how residents of Nairobi access water services. It is why the general celebrates - and is celebrated for - the sinking of boreholes in informal settlements as opposed to being celebrated for ensuring water services are provided at the lowest cost possible to the widest number of city residents without having to rely on expensive boreholes or contend with the environmental damage caused to water tables and wetlands.

Further, merely reminding me that Mr Sonko, the recording artist formerly known as Governor Bling Bling, was worse is not proof that the general is better at anything to do with municipal services. It is only proof that Nairobi's residents have been ill-served by its elected and appointed officials, and that there are no shortcuts to good service. Had the general been asked to modernise Kenya's Airforce, no one would have batted an eyelid; he is, after all, general in the airforce, where he has trained professionally for decades to rise to his current rank. Unfortunately, he came to municipal services without training, experience or a plan. Nairobi continues to pay the price for his ineptitude. His temporary duty assignment cannot end soon enough.

Of feral cats and police reforms

What one chooses to remember about the Kenya Police of the 1980s and 1990s is determined by how forgiving ones amnesia is. When I went to boarding school for my secondary school, like many teenage boys of my time, I knew well enough not to be accosted by police in the evening. Whether or not I was innocent, in uniform or dire medical distress (which happened frequently), if they ran into you at any time after 7 p.m., you would rue the day you stepped foot outside your school for anything than a fully chaperoned excursion in the company of a teacher. One of my friends never recovered from the violent assault he suffered at the hands of the police.

It was only years later when John Michuki admitted that the police were a tool for the control and oppression of the politically recalcitrant that it finally dawned on me that the directive to instil "discipline" in all Kenyans came from the top that I started to understand why "reforms" would always fail if the hand holding the political trigger was disinterested in police reforms. Mr Michuki certainly though the Ransley Commission report to be a complete waste of time - and so has every single one of his successors.

When the infant Pendo was killed by policemen, it was only the sustained public outcry that led to their arrest and prosecution, But four years after the trial began, the prosecution is yet to close its case. If it wasn't for the sustained public outcry that ensued, Benson Njiru's and Emmanuel Mutura's unexplained deaths at the hands of police would not have been investigated and their killers would not have been arrested and prosecuted. Four months after the two brothers were killed, no one is sure that the six police charged with their murder will ever be convicted. Five years after Willie Kimani, his client Josphat Mwenda and their driver Joseph Muiruri were abducted, tortured and murdered by policemen, we are only at the case-to-answer stage of the criminal trial, a trial where the police have stonewalled all the way.

From the moment we promulgated the new constitution, we have only paid lip service to police reforms. It is clear that the hands that hold the police's leash are loath to let go; the National Police Service Commission is powerful on paper and toothless in reality. The Independent Policing Oversight Authority is a pale imitation of a civilian oversight agency of policemen. The Internal Affairs Unit is renown for keeping a studious low profile. None of the cosmetic changes to police oversight and police leadership has demonstrably altered the fundamental nature of Kenya's police. The key to the state of affairs can be found in the stubborn unwillingness of the civilian authorities to implement and enforce the required reforms. This stubbornness is reflected in how they deploy policing resources, not for the safety of the people, but for the purpose of intimidating and controlling the people.

Policemen and policewomen are humans, parents, siblings, friends, children, grandchildren and members of the communities they hail from and reside in. As individuals, they are simultaneously victims and perpetrators of great inequality and unspeakable crimes. As an institution, the police forces are weapons of intimidation, fear, human rights abuse and great corruption and crime. It's been eleven years since we promulgated a new constitution, and things have not changed at all. Police continue to murder and solicit bribes with impunity. Isn't it time to admit that tinkering with the mechanics of policing - laws, rules and regulations, standing orders and standard operating procedures - misses the forest for the trees? The police and police institutions are not the problem. The problem is the political and civilian authorities. They are the ones in need of reform. Who will bell this feral cat?

It's time to send a message

Barely a decade has passed since "Ocampo Six", "Ekaterina", "Bensouda", "ICC" and "Waki Envelope" defined the run up to a general election. The tragic events that followed Mr. Samuel Kivuitu's declaration of the winner of the 2007 presidential election continue to define and redefine Kenyans and their relationship to their government. Of the many men and women who were party to the events that defined the aftermath of the election and the outcome of the abortive trial at the International Criminal Court, none cuts as tragic a figure as the former vice chairperson of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and first post-2010 senator of Mombasa County.

Those who care to remember will remember the passion he brought to his task investigating the violence that followed Mr. Kivuitu's declaration. Of the members of the Commission, he came across as unusually ardent, so much so that when rumours swirled about how witnesses had been bought and official reports manipulated, his name was linked to the rumours though no proof was ever adduced and the matter was allowed to rest. No one will remember the public investigation of the cause and aftermath of the 2007/2008 Post-Election Violence without remembering his public crusade to bring the perpetrators of the violence, especially the so-called Ocampo Six, to justice, whether here in kenya or at the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

He trod a well-trodden path after his stint on the Commission was over. He joined a political party, the darling of the voters. He was popularly elected to the Senate as his county's first senator. He became a vocal member of the elected classes. Then he had a falling out with his party leader and, in his bid to be re-elected, lost his party's nomination and his deposit in the bargain. Ever since, he has cut an increasingly pitiable figure in his quest to find political redemption and relevance while out in the electoral cold.

In recent months he has found a friend in one of the men he once passionately accused of crimes against humanity, who offers him the hope of an electoral comeback. Together they have walked, as his new benefactor seeks to become Kenya's fifth head of state and government. To those who can remember the firebrand who pursued justice as a Commissioner, his transformation is a true head-scratcher, a reverse Damascene conversion - once one had sight and now they are blind.

Of the many tragedies Kenya has suffered in the period after 2008's peace deal between the 2007 presidential belligerents, none is as heartbreaking as the failure to do justice to those who were murdered, maimed, dispossessed or displaced after the 2007 general election. The heartbreak is made more painful by the number of men and women who have abandoned the pursuit of justice, even refusing to pay lip service to the corse of justice. They are, almost to a person engaged, in the wild pursuit of a place at the high table when the change of guard takes place in August next year. The individual men and women who promised justice and who, for a time at least, pursued justice and who have now turned their coats and joined together with the men they investigated with such vigour before is almost too painful to witness. But we must bear witness and tell our story if only to warn our future selves of the fickleness of human political principles.

Though no one was convicted of crimes connected to the 2007/200 violence, no one was truly acquitted either. Many events conspired to defeat the ends of justice. Truth did not triumph. That fig leaf is unavailable to that man. There are many things that he can rationalise about his behaviour but not how he has seemingly abandoned the principles that guided him when he was a Commissioner and a senator. If it is political redemption and relevance that he seeks after five years in the electoral cold, he deserves neither. He deserves to lose and lose roundly. The voters must send him a clear message: he is no longer welcome in the corridors of power.

Katiba at Eleven

The Constitution of Kenya turned eleven years old twenty days ago. That day happened to be the day that the Court of Appeal rejected the pleas of the pro-BBI zealots and upheld the judgment of the High Court - save in the case of a few issues that didn't speak to the core of the BBI argument. The Government marked the ten-year anniversary of the Constitution but the event was marked in a muted fashion, coming as it is, when the pro-constitutional-amendment bandwagon had suffered a few setbacks, the least not being a split in the national executive regarding the fruits of The Handshake, the place of the Deputy President and the sniping from the idleness by civil society stalwarts.

It doesn't come as a surprise that the eleven-year anniversary passed without comment, whether from the government or the media. This is the last year before the next general election, which should be held on the 9th August, 2022, if Kenya isn't at war and parliament hasn't pushed back the date of the general election to 9th February, 2023 or 8th August, 2023 [see Article 102 of the Constitution].

In any case, the government was preoccupied with the BBI appeal and the national media had no interest in it - unless it was told to pay attention by the government, which seems to be the current sthatemedia relationship. I read an amazing Op-Ed by the group editorial director of the Nation Media Group, in which he tried to justify the soft-ball questions he and his fellow new editors lobbed at the president last week. While we would be excited to read a no-holds-barred bare-knuckle slug-fest interview of the president, most of us would settle for an honest accounting of the government from the head of that government. The salience of the constitutional anniversary falling on the same day as the appeal judgment should not have been given the go-bye by Mr. Mathiu and his fellow editors. And yet, it was, and we can't but wonder whether it is because news editors have fallen so low in their own estimation that writing copy for politicians and their games is what they can and intend to do.

The judiciary, also, did not care to mark the occasion and yet the BBI judgments of the High Court and the Court of Appeal were powerful affirmations of the ideals set out in the Constitution, the least not being the centrality of the people's sovereignty in the exercise of governmental powers by the president and other members of the government. The courts have awakened a powerful debate regarding what the Constitution is, what it does, whom it protects and the threats it faces from those who swore oaths to obey, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.

Parliamentarians of all shades have proposed twenty-one separate constitutional amendment bills that have gone nowhere. Though the Bills were introduced in Parliament, they did not receive the support of the people, or the parliamentarians, for one reason or another. All proposed amendments drew strength from the utterances made by the constitution's supporters in 2010 that 80% of the draft constitution was good - and the remaining 20% could be sorted out after its promulgation. They had no intention of honouring their word; once the constitution was promulgated, they turned their attention to power-sharing and political horse-trading - the 20% that needed to be sorted out was left by the wayside. Then came along Ekuru Aukot's Punguza Mizigo Bill and the BBI Bill that wore the façade of popular support but, in truth, formed part of the desire of the political elite to exclude the people from consequential decisions that affect the lives of the people in intimate and destructive ways.

The Lancaster House constitution's guard-rails were removed with the intention of creating an imperium in the presidency and by the time section 2A was repealed in 1990, 38 amendments in total had been effected. The latest crop of 74 that formed part of the BBI Bill were a reckless Hail Mary from the political elite. They should have formed the highlight of the eleven-year celebration of the Constitution. They would have been proof that the guard-rails the Constitution has today serve a vital purpose - only truly necessary amendments that enjoy the support of the majority of the people shall be allowed t go through. Amendments designed to parcel out governmental power among buccaneers and brigands shall be fed into the woodchopper of the judiciary.

We won't be knocked down

For a long time, Kenyans took for granted certain immutable facts. We were the world champions of middle-distance and long-distance road races. Regardless of whether the races were held in chilly European capitals, tech-filled US cities or sweltering Asian ones, a Kenyan 1-2-3 was taken as a given. The Ethiopians and Moroccans were our natural challengers, and every now and then would cause an upset, but it was global received wisdom that Kenyans were kings of the road. End of.

Tokyo 2020 is testing our faith in what is known about the known universe in painful ways. There are many explanations for our heart-rending change of circumstances, most of which are the tea-leaves'-reading technical jargon of the people who care passionately about such things. I have a different explanation, one that is informed by feelings" and not technical facts.

A few months ago, one of the senior-most government officials was photographed, clean-shaven. His physical appearance had undergone such a shocking change that we were, well, shocked. I can still remember the cruel statements that were made about him and, for a moment, I felt a twinge of pity for him. But after a horrific year, where lives and livelihoods had been destroyed, rend asunder, I could understand why his physical appearance had become so shocking. The same is true of our most cherished Olympic tradition: winning road races.

When Eliud Kipchoge ran that amazing not-race in Vienna in 2019, he reminded the whole wide world what Kenyans were capable of achieving through sheer determination. A few uncharitable windbags whispered unkindly that "it must have been the special shoes" but deep down in their black hearts, they knew that what they were seeing was the magic that made Kenyans special. Mr Kipchoge is a national - nay, global - treasure, as is every single Kenyan that competes in road races.

But not even Mr Kipchoge's running mates can have escaped the hellscape that 2020 became. Training regimens were destroyed by mental and physical manxieties. Our exceptional, mentally resilient athletes can't have escaped any of the things that made Kenyans' lives that much harder. They are humans; they are not robots. They see what we see. They feel what we feel When we suffer, they suffer with us. The malaise that has enervated us as a people, surely, it must have affected them, even if a little. The paucity of medals in Tokyo is but the proof of how they too, have suffered.

I am a Kenyan and I have a Kenyan's optimism about life. Our team may not shine as brightly as it shone in London in 2012 and Rio in 2016, but I know that it will not simply give up. Our team will fight for every medal. Our team will suffer many knocks, but it will never be knocked down. And when the next Olympiad rolls around, our team will shine so bright it will shame the sun. Just you wait.

Whiteness and Black hair

One aspect of whiteness that is impossible to miss is the way Black hair is received, treated, experienced, controlled and blamed for all manner of disciplinary and professionalism issues. The image of professionalism is a white man with well-groomed hair in suit and tie in an office setting. The image of unprofessionalism is a Black woman with "natural" hair, regardless of whether or not she is in a suit, plain blouse, comfortable heels, in an office setting. That Back hair has nothing to do with whether or not one is able to execute their professional responsibilities well is irrelevant. We know what we know and that's the end of that.

Every now and then we are reminded of how much further we have to go as people to liberate ourselves from the shackles of whiteness. Just this week, a parent has reminded us that even our children, cute as they be, the loves of our lives, are not immune or immunisable from the whiteness that corrals the adults in their lives. His two years old son has been denied a place at a school because his hair does not "meet the standards" of the school. I know a dog whistle when I hear one and this one is as loud as a siren.

There is a certain type of school administrator that is incapable of seeing Black-ness as wholesome. He, or she, carries the enormous burden of erasing the Black-ness of a child to replace it with the whiteness of a "professional". It always begins with the child's hair. If it is "unkempt", it is wrong. If it is "too long", it is bad. If it is gathered as dreadlocks, it is wrong. In fact, if it is not close-cropped and brushed to a high sheen, it is wrong. It doesn't matter whether the child is a boy or a girl. If the hair is anything but that which is set by the school's standards, it is wrong - and it must be corrected, Or Else. Hence the never-ending wars between school administrators and parents over their children's attendance at school with the hair of the parents' choice. The wars of whiteness over Black-ness.

Some of you will argue, "If you knew what the school rules were, and you chose to enroll your child in that school, then you must conform to the school's rules. Otherwise, peleka mtoto shule ingine." Just like a man's inability to see his privilege in the patriarchy, so too the rule-enforcer's inability to see the pernicious, deleterious effect of whiteness on all our lives. Many of our experiences of whiteness are a series of prohibitions, the Black (human, really) things that we can't do. Things that if they were done by ypipo would not arouse comment, let alone sanction.

Hair is almost always the first thing whiteness denies Black persons. Hair must be treated to chemical or mechanical processes in order to conform to the world of whiteness. It is not acceptable even after all that chemical and mechanical manipulation - it is merely no longer objectionable. It is tolerable. It is the sun-bleached scar on alabaster skin that is not that bad. It makes whiteness feel better about itself. The world is ordered in its likeness - which is always the preferred way for the world to be ordered. And if it means that a child's social and cultural education is short-circuited, then so what?