King Shit of Turd Mountain.

We all know one or two boys whose socialisation has left quite a lot to be desired, and who eventually come to believe what their parents have mad them to believe: the boy with the biggest penis is king and so, as surely as the sun will rise in the East, you will hear of an incident where the two of them whipped out their penises and compared which one was the bigger. This behaviour, bar one or two critical interventions that might take successfully, is adopted in their adult lives, where the man-boys find alternatives to their penises to measure. Amongst the middle classes this is usually seen in the amount of money one makes or the number of academic credentials one acquires in the course of their lives, which we are assured is a perfectly healthy thing to do.

But there is a sub-class of the middle classes that cannot abide by money-degree measurements; their urge to whip out their penises remains undiminished decades after they walked out of their institutions of learning, whether higher or not. Because of our social mores that keep up our pretense at civilisation and civility, these men cannot just take out their penises in public and because the available alternatives are not attractive a barometer for them, they have latched on to some alternatives with less salubrious qualities.

Among this sub-class of the middle class, the keen among you will have noticed, exists a competition to acquire certain trophies: wives, mistresses, bed-post notches and, curiously, enemies. Their strutting and parading and oratory peacocking is directed towards "beating" the Other Guy in the number of thighs they can get betwixt. So they dress like peacocks, they roar like lions, they stomp like elephants, they spend like drunken sailors, they drink like fish. All in their peculiar desire to be sexual conquerors of national and global repute. You can see their psychological need in the language they subconsciously employ even when discussing mundane matters. Self-actualisation, whether academic, commercial, political, theological, is not on the agenda. Sexual conquest is the primary driver of their appetites. And they have persuaded themselves that their appetites can never be sated.

Now let us not pretend that this comes as a shock. We have fantasised about it. We have all thought, "If I had a million dollars..." and then daydreamed about the men and women we would bed. It is a primal need. But that need is usually satisfied when we have found the one or two women who will be our companions till the day we enter Hades. It is a normal part of our psychological development. It is not an aberration, as some wazungu are trying to insist, for a man to spend the rest of his rather short life hitched to one woman. Or two. 

But the man-boy never grows up psychologically. He remains hostage to his urges. He will go to great lengths to satisfy them. In the end they will destroy him. He can sense the coming destruction but he is powerless to do anything about. He will try and stave off disaster. For a period he will conform, he will tamp down the fire raging in his loins. But he has never been armed with the weapons to control his desires. He has been indulged his all life and he has indulged himself with abandon, being rewarded at every stage and in every step. He will give in. He must or he is destroyed. So he does. Again and again. Achieving more and more. Then he wakes up one day as the king of his mountain, only then noticing that his mountain is a mountain of shit and he is standing on it all alone.

The Tragedy of Sameness.

How do you know that your government loves you, cares for you and wants nothing but the best for you? You don't. Not really. Because the government is an abstract idea, a convenient fig leaf for when men and women with power conspire to make your every waking moment a nightmare. That must be the way the hundreds of thousands who survived the murder, rapine, rape, arson, assault, dismemberment, displacement, banditry and robber in the aftermath of the 2007 general election must feel. Elections should not have aftermaths; in Kenya only the 2002 and the 2013 general elections can be said to have ended without aftermaths, though they continue to live a bitter aftertaste. Anyway, back to today's whinge. The survivors of what Kenya's profiteering supine Fourth Estate has dubbed the PEV must be living the worst nightmares of their lives.

If you have never suffered an unfairness, an injustice, an assault you can never appreciate the bile that rises in your thorax when you see the cause of the unfairness, injustice, assault strutting around town like the cock of the walk, the cat that swallowed the canary, the Bull. Whether we will admit it or not, there are tens of thousands of women who have been violently disgraced, who cannot go back to their homes, their villages, their towns because their violators will be there, in person, smiling toothily for all to see with that secret knowledge that shouldn't be theirs. There are thousands of men who cannot go home either. What they had been brought up to believe could only happen to women, happened to them, in front of their wives, and daughters and in the full glare of their neighbours. Their humiliation is total. They can no longer hold their heads high. They cannot rebuild their identities. They are shattered shells held together by bitter, bitter bile.

The survivors remember the promises. They remember the insincere concentration of the members of task forces, commissions and offices of prosecutors. They even remember the politicians' deceptions about compensation, and truth, justice and reconciliation. How foolish they feel for believing. How foolish they must feel in the digital age to be mocked with the digital records of promises that shall never be fulfilled. How foolish they must feel that they gave their trust so freely. Again. Because it wasn't the first time they gave their trust so freely. Their fathers did. Their grandfathers did. And each time they did, freely, openly and hopefully, somebody metaphorically pulled down their pants, bent them over a barrel and without so much as a "by your leave" or a bit of Vaseline, proceeded to commit unmentionable violations against them.

Few of them care for the charges levelled against the President or the Deputy President. They never have. They have never me the two, see? In their secret hearts they know they will never meet the President or his deputy. They will read about them; they will see them on TV and hear them on the radio, but they will likely never meet the two, share a cup of tea with them, sit with them and tell them their troubles. But they will meet the men and women who committed such barbaric acts against them and their families, friends, neighbours. The survivors will meet them at the market, in church, on the bus, at the hospital. And the survivors will also meet the ones who ensured their violators walk scot-free. The survivors will meet their violators, and it is the survivors who will avert their eyes in shame. It is the survivors who will bow their heads in fearful, respectful silence. It is the survivors who will be forced to apologise for being nuisances, to mouth the words as they supplicate themselves for pittances. It has been so for seven years. It has sunk in by now. The survivors are on their own. The ICC has said so. Their government has said so. The civil society has said so. They have been reminded that while some things change, the things that define us as a nation, as a country, as a people remain tragically the same.

The Age of Ideas.

I cannot imagine what went through the President's mind when he was sitting in that court room at The Hague. All those hours spent flying there and then listening to men and women speak about him, about his government and how they feel about him without being allowed a word in edgeways or an indication of what the court would decide. Those who have had to wait for decision over which they had little control must be able to relate to the President and even if their feelings about him are conflicted, they should be able to sympathise with him.

When he was first named as a suspect there were many that reacted with a touch of Schadenfreude, taking a perverse pleasure at the sight of the then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance being treated like a criminal. There were others who were outraged at the idea that a prosecutor in a foreign court would dare to charge our Deputy Prime Minister with such heinous crimes over which he couldn't possible have had a hand in. But it has been four years and much water has flowed down the Rubicon since then.

We will never know whether there has been a concerted conspiracy in the highest levels of the government to stymie the ICC investigations in Kenya. What we do know is that the longer the matter has hang fire, the more precarious the Office of the Prosecutor's position has become. It is now accepted, even in the corridors of the ICC, that Luis Moreno-Ocampo did a piss poor job in his investigations, choices of suspects, choices of witnesses, pre-trial and trial strategies and in his choice of words. Whether there has been non-co-operation by the Government of Kenya or witness tampering by the accused, Mr Moreno-Ocampo's, and now Ms fatou Bensouda's, cases were a houses of cards that would collapse under the weight of their own infirmities.

Kenya's cases are unique. Without a doubt heinous crimes were committed. Without a doubt there are hundreds of thousands of victims. And without a doubt the Government of Kenya, civil society and the International Criminal Court served the victims poorly. But the crimes that were committed were not committed in the same manner that the crimes committed in Rwanda in 1994 or Bosnia in 1992 - 1995. It was a civil conflict without clear rebel armies at war with the forces of the State. There was no overall commander. There were no decisive battles. Massacres took place, but there were no overt organisers of the massacres. Mr Moreno-Ocampo spoke of a "network" but even he must now admit that the "network" idea will no longer hold water in the absence of Maj Gen (Rtd) Hussein Ali or Amb Francis Muthaura in the list of suspects in the dock.

Political conflicts in Kenya have always led to severe violence. It happened in 1992 and it happened again in 1997. 2007/08 may have been the worst but it did not differ significantly from the 1992 or 1997 clashes. The solution, despite the ardent campaigning by civil society and the overt and covert interference of key European governments and the United States, should have been a political one. Which was what the Grand Coalition Government should have been. Reconciliation would only come about if the people who had been displaced were restored to their properties, and where murderers and rapists were identified by victims were prosecuted and convicted or the victims given a chance to forgive their attackers. The campaign to turn the political problems of 2007/08 into legal ones has merely postponed the day of reckoning.

Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto have a chance to set the clock back and solve the seemingly intractable problems of 2007/08 ironically because of their parliamentary tyranny of numbers. They will have to overcome the objections of the hardliners in their alliance. They will have to build a unity government in all but name so that the broadest coalition of political interests can be accommodated in settling our political problems once and for all. It is the only way that the politics of marginalisation will end and we can enter the age of the politics of ideas.

Sonko is a genius.

It was a damp squib. Maybe not for the Nairobi's senator. But for the others it was a damp squib. Hundreds of thousands of shillings were expended. Perhaps millions were expended. Only so a president, in his private capacity, could travel half way around the world to sit in a court room - and not say anything. Then there is the case of the Nairobi senator who "accompanied the president for moral support" and brought with him a "rescue squad." Whatever else we may think, Gideon Mbuvi aka Mike Mbuvi aka Mike Mbuvi Sonko is one of a kind and I think he is brilliant.

While the likes of Kigumo's Jamleck Kamau and Kajiado Central's Lt Gen Joseph Nkaissery would want to look and sound urbane and sophisticated, in the mould of the parliamentarians in the Palace at Westminster, the sad truth is that none of Kenya's parliamentarians are that urbane or sophisticated. And Sen Sonko embraces this fact with unbridled glee. He is without a doubt one of the most honest politicians in Kenya and Kenyans need to thank him for his service to the nation. Without Sen Sonko we would still continue in our delusion that we are like the British or the American members of Congress. We are not. We are nowhere near them.

The Americans and the British are very good at hiding their warts. The British parliamentarians have proven to be very good at swindling the British Exchequer. However, when what was dubbed by the Fleet Street as the Benefits Scandal was unearthed, British Parliamentarians resigned in disgrace. The American members of the House of Representatives have not covered themselves in glory either; many of them have been forced to resign over sex scandals. Just last year two congressmen resigned because they sent sexts to women who were not their wives and a governor was forced out for having an affair with an Argentinian and lying about it while another governor is being tried for receiving gifts from a wealthy benefactor.

Kenyan parliamentarians think of themselves as a cut above the rest of us, They think of themselves as members of the elite upper classes. If it was just about membership of a club or deep pockets, they would be right. But because of their character, their behaviour and their influence, they remain firmly stuck among the middle classes. Crass, openly avaricious, vicious, petty and vindictive; these are qualities that permeate all the classes, but among the elected representatives of Kenya, they are more openly discerned. I would go so far as to declare that the last classy elected class was elected in 1983. Since then successive elections have elected successively low class representatives.

It takes a Sonko to flash a light on the elected classes to remind them of their true worth. Sen Sonko does not hide his colourful past; he embraces it with gusto. He has money and he's not afraid to show it, its provenance being a matter of jealous speculation among his colleagues in Parliament. He doesn't pretend to be an aficionado of Brioni or Hugo Boss; his tailor remains in business because of the Senator's unquenched thirst for primary colours. He's not Italian, so Italian cuisine is not very high on his bucket list. Nor Italian for that matter. Or French, German, Spanish or Portuguese. He's no academic in his ivory tower so he does not need to philosophise about why he does what he does. He is the true politician. He wants something. He finds a way to get it. His colleagues could learn from him.

He did not go The Hague to make a point about the rule of law or the magnanimity of the President. He went to The Hague to tell the International Criminal Court, the Office of the Prosecutor, the witnesses against the President and the victims' representative to get stuffed. He did it like he knows best: loudly. And he brought a gang with him. And it was just as loud. And it was brilliant. He should start preparing for his presidential bid. Perhaps he has. He'd be more honest as a president than any of the pretenders to the throne.

On politics and the ICC

There is a whiff of the theatrical to the choreographed temporary handing over of power by Uhuru Kenyatta to William Ruto. And it is all fine. They are, after all, politicians and they are very good ones when they get what the Americans call optics right. Mr Kenyatta is embattled at home; his Jubilee manifesto is almost in tatters because of an avaricious Parliament and equally avaricious county assemblies. The Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is determined to nail him for what it alleges is his key role in the post-2007 general election violence. So in his address to the Joint Sitting of the National Assembly and the Senate President Kenyatta did what every politician with his feet to the fire do: he deflected, he dissembled and he misdirected. And he did it in style.

There is this trope in discussing public affairs against the "politicisation" of matters. Those who cleave to this idea misunderstand the vital importance of politics in the life of a nation. Without political actors, political acts or politicisation of affairs, the only solutions available to the people involve arms, violence, bloodshed and death. It is through politics that we can mediate the diverse differences that threaten to rend asunder a nation. It is how different coalitions, factions and interests are brought to the same table to iron out their differences. Politics works when it is not taken as a zero-sum game where for someone to gain another must lose. It is through politics that priorities are set and it is through politics that meagre national treasure is expended for the general well-being of the people.

The world of the management consultant is about efficiency: efficient allocation of resources and efficient use of resources. Efficiency is not a bad thing in and of itself. But a nation is not a commercial enterprise where the logic of efficiency would deny resources to "low potential" areas and concentrate them in the "high potential" ones. This was the rationale for the Sessional No 10 of 1965 and its effects have lingered long after the conclusion of the fifth five-year plan. Northern Kenya is bereft of modern signs of development: regular electricity, piped water, educational facilities, public safety and the like. Part of this general underdevelopment in Northern Kenya can be attributed to the poor employment of politics to mediate between the need to protect the upward trajectory of development of the high potential areas with the acute need for massive dollop of resources for the low potential areas.

Therefore, those who refuse to acknowledge the place of politics in the governance of a nation are also the ones who are likely to turn a blind eye to the privations of the ones they would purport to speak for in their world of efficiency. Every government must make a choice about what to do with the parts of the nation that have been left behind. Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Toroitich arap Moi made the wrong choice time after time. Mwai Kibaki attempted to change things but his tenure was marred by abuse of office by his underlings and massive graft. Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy have the opportunity to move beyond the management-speak of efficiency. If Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto perfect the art of politicisation there is hope yet that they will deploy their political skills to finding solutions for the most intractable problems facing our young nation. 

Mr Kenyatta's case at The Hague and Mr Ruto's trial have proven to be political problems for which they must find solutions. If they cannot solve the PEV Problem, they may yet find that their government fails on every front. The dead laptop project can be traced to their PEV Problem; politicians and public officers do not have confidence that the President and Deputy President have their minds fully committed to seeing through the Jubilee programme. And because they have been careful enough that the opposition cannot raise a ground t remove them from office they are in a political half-life: until the ICC is tamed they cannot move their agenda forward; and because they are yet to find the political solution for the ICC they cannot put their minds and their skills to moving their agenda forward. Therefore, while we may deprecate their political successes so far, it is time we prayed that their ICC problem is resolved soon so that we can see whether their plans for Kenya re for the better or not.

A permanent stain.

Every military commander knows that military plans do not survive first contact, or words to that effect. The commanding generals of the Jubilee Alliance have had to adapt to the changing political environment, especially with the changing fortunes of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Fortune favours the prepared mind and Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto are reaping the benefits of Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda's (and her predecessor's) missteps in the two Kenya cases. Innocent till proven guilty is the foundation of the Doctrine of Presumption of Innocence and Mr Kenyatta, bar the unexpected, is going to witness the collapse of an international case against him. Mr Ruto may yet be acquitted.

That, at least, is what we are told to see. Let us go beyond the superficial, though. Kenya, in 2005, acceded to and ratified the Rome Statute and pledged to uphold its provisions. There was no reason for Kenya to accede let alone ratify the treaty; Kenya my have had serious political violence in its brief history as an independent nation, but even the clashes of 1992 and 1997 did not raise in the peoples' minds the spectre that in Kenya war crimes had been committed. Mwai Kibaki and his Cabinet may have been persuaded by the financial sops that come with these kinds of treaties to sign the treaty, but there really was no reason to accede and ratify the Rome Statute.

Mwai Kibaki wasn't really interested in a second term; he was sickly and he knew he wouldn't cope well with the strains of leading a fractious nation, a termite infested government and a shady opposition. But he changed his mind. He mobilised his political troops. And he refused to concede. Then the country went to shit. Raila Odinga claimed victory. Kibaki and his troops told him to get stuffed. Then it got worse. Thousands were murdered. Hundreds of thousands were raped, maimed, and displaced. Then it became apocalyptic. Mwai Kibaki's government refused to investigate, prosecute or try any of the thousands of cases that arose after that election. 

He did the next best thing. He appointed a Commission of Inquiry and hoped against hope that it would do what all previous commission had done, that is, whitewash the whole affair, exonerate the key suspects and give Kenyans a chance to vent but essentially guarantee that nothing would be done. But he made the grave error of appointing Philip Waki who had no love lost for people who would have radical surgeried his ass out of the judiciary on what turned out to be false testimony who proceeded o investigate with a certain vengeance, prepare and publish his report and then invited the International Criminal Court to Kenya.

In all this, we were assured that the plight of the victims was the reason for the maneuvering. The Office of the Prosecutor was investigating on behalf of the victim. Civil society organisations were participating in the investigations on behalf of the victims. The main suspects reconciled for the sake of the victims. Lip service, one and all. It has been five years. The victims have not been compensated for the lost property. Many lost their lands; they will never go back home. Witnesses who vowed to tell of the horrors of the violence have recanted. The worst betrayal must be the people who claimed to be their leaders and to speak on their behalf have abandoned them to their fate. Politicians and men of the cloth have washed their hands of the victims; they have hitched their wagons to the train pulled by the suspects.

When all is said and done, when the dust has finally settled, and the history books are written, UhuRuto will be praised for its tactics, determination and vision. The footnotes, however, will be a painful reminder of the betrayal of the victims by their government, the Office of the Prosecutor, civil society and the mighty International Criminal Court. This betrayal will linger long after UhuRuto's bones have whitened; it will be a permanent stain on the national conscience.

The bully is always afraid.

Bullies have a certain cretinous way about them, or so decades of received pseudo-psychological wisdom would have us believe. According to some of our local legends, the man who crows the loudest down at the local is most likely the most henpecked at home. But until someone brave stands his ground and refuses to give ground to the bully, we may never know that he is a paper tiger and given the inevitable bandwagon effect that is bound to take place, the bully will find himself with an entourage of flunkies, brown-nosers, ass-kissers and sycophants of every shade - and shape.

When you listen to them, whether you believe them or not, you cannot help but be impressed by the totality of their loyalty, their fealty, their absolute devotion to Their Man. It comes as a quite a shock to realise that professional credentials mean nothing in the here and now if they cannot be dedicated to the success and survival of the one to whom one owes absolute obedience. It is easy now to understand how Gaius Julius Caesar must have felt betrayed when Brutus, Cato and the rest of them refused to give him their total devotion even after they appointed him dictator.

The bully need not have real power; all he needs is the illusion of power which can sometimes be a powerful sight to see. True power comes from legitimacy; it can only be wielded absolutely if the people have handed it to you without reservation. Therefore it is the rarest of things. Indeed, it can be argued that only Adolf Hitler came close to possessing true power which is why every fascist in the making admires the developed Germany of the 1930s but pretends to hate Hitler for the murderous things he had done though the two cannot be separated.

Kenyan bullies rarely, if ever, even enjoy the illusion of power. Their power is frequently purchased by a credit note deposited by their fathers. Some have broken free of the shackles of their family legacies; many are held hostage to ideals they do not espouse for privileges they did not ask for and might not want. They are victims of circumstances which they struggle to shape. And so they surround themselves with similar sons, not necessarily age-mates but definitely members of the same class. And if the bully has even a smidgen of intelligence, he will shape the minds of his cabal and they will swear fealty to him - mostly for selfish ends. But like ,an insidious virus, the fealty-for-selfish-reasons will morph without their realisation and they will find themselves foreswearing reason, logic and sense. They will become the pitbulls to their bully's master and they will maul one and all in his name.

Watching the pitbulls tells one a lot about their master. The more vicious they are in his defence the greater the likelihood that he is but a clay-footed statue, a bit of water and all will be mud. They will deploy their rhetorical and intellectual gifts in his service in order to hide the paucity of his capacity. They will focus on an enemy so that he can be seen to be a general at war. They will achieve little because in their world, every one is a threat and every threat will damn the rest of us to eternal hellfire. They fear the day a David to their Goliath will slingshot himself into the history books and send them and their bully-champion to the ashheap of history. They live in fear because the bully is always afraid.

Our land, our solutions.

When an accusation is levelled against you, whether you committed the offending act or not, there is a hard knot in the pit of your stomach, your mouth runs dry and you always wonder, "Why me?" It is a natural human instinct, I imagine, to defend oneself against any accusation. Even if one did the deed, the shock of the accusation alone will cause the bile to rise in ones mouth. Unless, of course, one is a sociopath, a psychopath or one has some deep psychological problems. When Luis Moreno-Ocampo fingered Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto, Gen Mohammed Ali, Amb Francis Muthaura, Henry Kosgey and Joshua arap Sang in 2010, he and Kenya could not have known that the dance would be long and devastating.

Whether Uhuru Kenyatta did it or not is now moot; the International Criminal Court is widely discredited and reviled in Africa. Members of the African Union may not volubly share their disappointment with the Court, but few of them will lose any sleep if its defanged and emasculated. It has failed to live up to its billing. While Africa is home to monsters of every shade, the hypocrisy underpinning the rationale of the Court has proven a bitter pill to swallow even for the relative angels in the African Union. Whether we wish to admit it today or when the League-of-Nations style of mishaps are finally apparent for all to see, the International Criminal Court is an artifact of the post-colonial vestiges of the White Man's Burden.

Africa is the laboratory for crackpot ideas. In the Eighties and Nineties, the Bretton Woods Institutions played merry hell with the economies and lives of hundreds of millions of people with their Structural Adjustment Programmes. Their pernicious effects can still be felt today. More recently, the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation have descended on bits of Africa on another civilising mission, this time dropping democracy along with their cruise missiles on Libya, Somalia and Egypt. As expected, that experiment has not turned out quite as they expected; there are now more unstable regimes wherever the United States and its various "coalitions" have dropped their bombs and planted their flags than at any time in the past twenty years. In time, even Maina Kiai and George Kegoro will be forced to admit that in the annals of human rights progress, the International Criminal Court was a colossal mistake.

The reason is not so difficult to discern. As with all other Western imports to the vast expanse of the African continent, the largely monolithic "Western world" refused to accept the reality of the beautiful diversity that is Africa. Artificial lines drawn at the turn of the Nineteenth Century could not erase cultures and traditions that went back in some cases five millennia. "African solutions for African problems" may sound trite but there is a kernel of truth to it. If there is a continent that will be able to crack the problem of total war, genocide and crimes against humanity, it is Africa - but only if the tried-and-tested shoot-first, shoot-everything policy of the United States and its "allies" is not tried nor tested anymore in Africa.

Yes, African despots have murdered millions of Africans, and yes, African tyrants have looted the treasuries of their nations. So what? It is not as if the much praised "founding fathers" of the United States were saints seeing that their built their nation on the bones of the First Nations. Genocide is a global tradition. It is not as if the British royals were not looters and pilferers of global proportions; when they hand back the Koh-i-Noor to its rightful owners in the Indian subcontinent.

Yes, we can draw lessons from the past gross human rights abuses of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and the Vatican, but please do not insist that these lessons can only come from the "West." There were African civilisations that did not treat women like chattels; Pharaonic Egypt and the Aksumite Empire come readily to mind. we are thankful for the mechanised technology that the West has bequeathed the world; but do not mistake technological advancement and prowess for moral authority. We will find solutions to our problems and we will do it with or without the hypocritical whingeing of the boosters of the International Criminal Court.

Empire-building in Kenya.

The Nitpicker, in this Monday's Business Daily, details the hardluck life of those who are unfortunate enough to come face to face with the forces of law and order in the transport sector, as we so eloquently describe it. The subtle intimidation to pay a bribe to the cop who accosts you for one traffic infraction or another. The not-subtle-anymore intimidation when you are detained and asked to post a cash bail. The sledgehammer of the judicial process when you attend court for your date with justice. The minutiae of dealing with the National Police Service, the Judiciary, the Kenya Prisons Service and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions are laid out in the Nitpicker's How traffic laws breed graft instead of ensuring safety and order on our roads, if you know what to look for.

Allow me to add to the discussion. I am told by parliamentary counsel (that is legislative drafters to you, dear reader) of a certain vintage that lawmaking in Kenya had a certain order to it, a certain logic that determined when a law was required. The questions that revolved around the necessity of a statute or a set of regulations formed what civil society operators now know as the policy environment. Difficult questions would be asked and persuasive answers would be found to address the questions. In the policy environment the answer was not always a new statute or an amending statute; sometimes a set of regulations or guidelines would suffice. The decision to pursue a particular course would only be made after a policy paper was prepared that took into account the complex, interlinked circumstances that gave rise to the problem eh policy was supposed to address. That order, that logic, it seems, is no more.

When the Second President discovered that he was on his way out, that the people were not really as grateful as two decades of sycophancy had led him to believe, he took his overbearing hand from the helm. Policy-making died in 1992/1993. National problems could be solved with a mix of ill-conceived legislation and corruption-fuelled ethno-jingoism. The wheels truly came of the bus during the spectacular ten years of the Third President's two terms. Statutes were enacted without rhyme or reason to address so many myriad problems that sometimes a law would be enacted to address something that another law was already addressing.

Many failed to see that the flurry of law-making hid empire building on a colossal scale. Once Moi's dead hand was finally yanked away from the levers of public administration, every permanent secretary worth his salt was busily and steadily building an empire of his own by establishing parastatals and other forms of government-owned entities which would draw from the Consolidated Fund and serve as, (a) retirement plans for the PSs and their cronies or as, (b) piggy banks for the inevitable political ambitions of the PSs. Soon enough the asleep-at-the-wheel members of the cabinet were not asleep any more and they got in on the racket. It was not long after that that our indefatigably avaricious parliamentarians decided that they wanted in on it too. And this is how we ended up with the National Transport Safety Authority (NTSA) and its penchant for enforcing obscure bits of the Traffic Act.

The NTSA came to life in a policy vacuum; the prima facie rationale for its establishment is sound. A deeper analysis of this rationale will inevitably point out that the benefits of the NTSA's existence will quite soon enough be eroded by its costs. In the current corruption-fuelled law-enforcement environment, it is only a matter of very little time before the NTSA joins the National Police Service's traffic officers and certain members of the Judiciary in the still growing ranks of the corrupt. The true reason for the establishment of the NTSA is to wangle out of the Consolidated Fund ever greater sums for which little oversight will be undertaken by the National Assembly. Past behaviour is a guide to future action. When it comes to billion-shilling allocations from the Consolidated Fund, there has always followed wild speculation with the funds, gross misuse and rife graft. The NTSA can publish its Vision, Mission and Core Values all it wants. That won't prevent it from becoming ever more the parasite that the traffic police are.

We can rescue you, Mr Hersi.

In the serene surrounding of the White Sands Beach Resort & Spa I am sequestered from the petty annoyances that define a typical Thursday. I don't have to worry about that crazy Umoinner or that combative Forward Traveler. I don't have to hear from that kanges about the benefits of settling for his rickety jalopy that passes for a public service vehicle. They don't deliver newspapers to the rooms, so I don't have to encounter the face of a mheshimiwa headlining something else inane. There are no radios in the room so I don't have to endure the typical Nairobi FM morning show with its mix of salaciousness and a play list that is at least a decade too old. All I have to expect is the soothing serenity of the Indian Ocean doing what oceans do.

But there is a niggling thought that simply will not subside: tourism is in the crapper. There is no way the White Sands would court my custom with such avidity if the pale faces from the West were digging deep in their holiday funds to get themselves to our sun-kissed coast. Do you know how they demonstrate they want me as a regular visitor? The ndauwos at the gate didn't even bother to ask in their typical coastal argot, "We ni nani?" They were, or they pretended to be, happy that I was staying at their hotel, that I had brought friends, that I was spending money in their spa and their beach bar. They didn't seem to mind I was rubbing shoulders with John Serut and his army of flunkies and brownnosers. And they plied me with an endless supply of ice-cold complimentary water. Buckets of it too.

For a decade I have been visiting this town and for a decade I have felt like a pariah, an interloper, a foreigner among my people. Not today. Today I am well-rested and eager to face the uncertainties of an uncertain day. I write this knowing full well that despite the "rebasing" of the Gross Domestic Product, Mr Mwangi at the Kipande House Branch of my bank is not going to suddenly add zeroes to my piffling bank account. I write this knowing that in three days, Mrs Kamau is going to demand that I settle my account for the month or else she will start looking for a new tenant post haste. I write this knowing that Uchumi has become a shit supermarket despite paying off its debts to the government. I write this knowing that come Friday, the good professor pwill expect me at my desk ready to offer my inadequate counsel on matters of great national importance.

Tourism needs the likes of yours truly. We are low maintenance, but when we cut loose we do so in style. We bankrupt ourselves in the hopes that providence will be providential. We have been priced out of the new car, new car smell market. We can only afford mortgages if we "donate" a kidney or a part of our liver. (Or win an uji supply tender.) But we are beginning to appreciate the subtle, insidious benefits of time off and walks on the white sands of the White Sands. We can be the solution to the billion-shilling hole Mohammed Hersi and his fellow investors are experiencing. We may not be the Capital Club's Donald Kipkorir or his friends, but what we lack in individual heft, we make up in mass volume and there are hundreds of thousands of us. All Mr Hersi & Co need to do is hold their noses and fling open their doors. (And their hearts if the spirit moves them.)

Abortion. Can we talk about it?

It is only the callous who will dismiss mental health as not being a problem. There are those who will deny that the mental health of a person is as important as physiological health. These are the people who lack the sophistication to understand the human anatomy and the complex biochemistry that human organs and the central nervous system that affects our mental health. It is why I am surprised that, according to recent research into the matter, that the church, whether traditional ones or the evangelical and pentecostal strains, has little to do, or say, about mental health.

One of the clues to this reluctance must be tied to the research by several leading healthcare providers and policy-makers regarding the link between crisis pregnancies and the mental health of the pregnant. Sexual assault is the most common cause of a crisis pregnancy. The assault alone is responsible for suicide, depression and a permanent state of fear in the victim. More often than not, if there is an ensuing pregnancy, it exponentially compounds the mental problems of the victim. Many Christian fundamentalists insist that if the physiological well-being of the victim is not at risk, she must not be permitted to terminate the unwanted pregnancy.

The debate around the termination of pregnancies is driven mostly by Christian fundamentalist extremism. Some extremists do not see the irony of murdering doctors who assist women to terminate pregnancies. In their warped sense of justice, they will murder doctors who assist women to terminate pregnancies because abortion is murder. The "killing of the unborn" is murder. All life is precious, so they tell us, especially the life of the unborn. They seem to be partial to an Abrahamic interpretation of the eye-for-and-eye rule that requires every "killing" to be answered by still more killing. I am surprised that they have not pushed for the amendment of the Penal Code to provide for capital punishment for women who procure an abortion.

Abortion is a very sensitive subject, whether one is a man, a woman, a man or woman of the cloth, a lawmaker or a disinterested observer. It raises passions. But there is something frightening about the moral certitude and absolutism of the religious fundamentalist, especially the Christian religious fundamentalist. There's absolutely no doubt that anything done my man to cause the death of the unborn is murder. There's absolutely no doubt that the penalty for that murder, in addition to the eternal fires of damnation, is death. There's absolutely no argument that can possibly be made to persuade them that in certain, exceptional and rare circumstances, that it would be preferable to abort a pregnancy than to carry it to term. To the Christian fundamentalist who is absolutely certain, all abortion is murder and the penalty for that murder is death.

Absolutist certitude shuts the door to compromise. It presumes that only one viewpoint can, shall prevail. It reduces all reason to something valueless. It brooks no dissent. It is the usually the preserve of the dictator who knows best about what his people desire, need. Religious fundamentalism is the worst form of tyranny. It is frequently fact-free. It sometimes attracts the least intelligent among us. It, ironically, breeds violence and death whereas the usual religious incantations speak of peace. Christian fundamentalists like the reviled Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are the purveyors of great intolerance and the contributors to intractable conflicts that will rage on and on because their adherents have given up the power to think and reason. It is for this reason why it is impossible to talk to a Kenyan Christian religious fundamentalist on abortion, especially if he has drunk full from the waters offered by the Falwells and Robertsons of the unhinged United States of America.

Nation FM is a flawed teacher.

Every now and then, when the state of my world is particularly fraught with trepidation, hesitation and ennui the likes of which will make one weep with despair, I switch over my radio to the one FM station that it can catch, Nation FM and its State of the Nation morning show. Angela Angwenyi and Lorna Irungu-Macharia do a decent job trying to analyse contemporary events and topics with their visitors, some of whom have wit, wisdom and an on-air sense of style that the likes of Kiss 100 and Classic 105 can only dream of. This Friday morning they were knee-deep in the apparently knotty problem of weddings, with a tangential consideration of marriage as an institution.

What I was able to glean from the show despite the constant musical interruptions is that very few of us understand the difference between the two; indeed many conflate the two as the witty presenters did once in a while during the show. The second revelation was a bit surprising; the presenters implied that only the parties to a marriage could ever possibly understand the difference between the two. Finally, they fed their listeners this fallacy that a wedding was the principal cultural obligation if a man and a woman were to be considered legitimately married.

Every now and then we are reminded that the monied classes in Kenya are peculiar, more peculiar than the walking masses who inspired Michael Joseph's observations of our peculiar calling habits. State of the Nation is aimed at the burgeoning middle class that has come to "appreciate the finer things in life" and which will not bat an eyelid at spending a million shillings on a bottle of brandy. These are the people who set the public tone of debate on political, economic and, increasingly today, cultural matters. And they speak perfectly to the invited guests on State of the Nation, for these guests are a reflection of Nation FM's audience, their mores and their priorities.

The obsessive discussion, bother overt and sub rosa, of the place of money in our lives is a particular identifier of the Kenyan middle class. On today's State of the Nation show, it was clear that the participants were paying lip service to the social and cultural values of a wedding ceremony or, indeed, a marriage; but they sure were animated by the place of money in the wedding. While they all declared with varying degrees of emphasis that "I do not join wedding committees or give money" their discussions revolved around how resources for a wedding could be mobilised; whether friends and relatives should be asked to "do their bit" or whether they should volunteer; whether how much one spent was or was not indicative of the "classiness" of the event. (To them a marriage is an event and only after is it a solemn ceremony with social, cultural and economic significance.) State of the Union proves that Mammon is the god that rules our airwaves, even when we assiduously pretend that he is not.

State of the Nation and shows of its ilk have lulled us into a cozy dreamworld where bounty is to be had for little exertion. In a nation where half the population cannot afford more than one meal a day, and where more than two-thirds are one bad harvest away from famine, that bounty remains a fantasy that will never be realised. We have been sold a bill of goods by the peacocks of the upper economic classes who shape our views of the world through their playthings such as TV and FM radio stations. Angela and Lorna are the mouthpieces for a class that wants us to believe in the illusion that we are valued actors in the theatre of public discourse while in reality Lorna and Angela are the Houdini-like distraction from the economic, cultural and moral rapine of their masters. It is this illusion that has so far prevented the more ambitious among us from starting revolutions or uprisings and what has persuaded the majority of us to join in with the looters and perverters of justice n shouting down, and shooting down, those that do.

Maybe one day we will be lucky enough to get men and women with the capacity to contextualise contemporary issues and events, to look beyond the superficiality of soundbites and to offer a nuanced appreciation of the cultural differences that we have all along elided for the instant gratification that we have been told is our birthright. Angela and Lorna are charming and entertaining but they are not the voices of reason. Those broadcasting on our airwaves are yet to persuade all of us that they are voices of reason. They can entertain us; let them not continue pretending that they will educate us. They are not ready yet.

MCAs are too unhinged to give them guns.

An elected representative in Kenya's National assembly does not seem to have the skills to handle a firearm but because he is an elected representative, a State officer and the nature of the work he does, he has been issued with a firearms license and walks about armed to the teeth like a Somali pirate. His misadventures in airports with his firearm seem not to have stilled the patently ridiculous demands by county elected representatives for firearms licenses, firearms and armed bodyguards. 

Members of County Assemblies argue that they too are elected representatives, State officers, and that their nature of their work entitles them to firearms and armed bodyguards. They should look to poor John Munyes who was shot in the hip by his bodyguard; bodyguards are no good if they cannot handle their firearms and end up turning them on their protectees. The members of the National Assembly and their colleagues in the Senate have severe mental health problems but in comparison with the people elected to county assemblies, Members of Parliament are sagacious and sober as the proverbial judge.

Members of County Assemblies, MCAs, are mentally unhinged; they are the spiritual successors of councillors. Some of them have demonstrated that the bawling, chair-throwing, fisticuffs-driven approach to political score-settling is something they approve of. So too extortion, blackmail and outright influence-peddling. You must remember the story of the semi-literate member of the Nairobi City County Assembly who could barely string a simple sentence together in English and who had somehow managed to travel to Italy to "learn about growing wine." Imagine that one with a Ceska 9mm semiautomatic pistol with 14 rounds of ammunition and a user's manual written in liability-avoiding legalese.

Our elected representatives are afraid of us. I wonder if it has anything to do with the way they practice their art. In the great game of politics, MCAs and MPs are united in their incompetence. They are quite frankly the worst people to know. They lie. They cheat. They set Kenyan against Kenyan. And some of them have an unhealthy obsession with other men's junk an they will not miss an opportunity to mention those other men's junk or a peculiar element of that junk. Still others have an obsession with bedding everything that's in  skirt such that their official offices have began to resemble Mexican bordellos.

So I do not take too kindly to Dr Abdi Nuh, the Speaker of the Tana River County Assembly's demand for firearms for his thousands of colleagues. I sympathise with Dr Nuh; Tana river is a very dangerous county. But the solution is not to turn MCAs into Rambo but to address the underlying social and economic schisms that have given rise to bandits and brigands. Dr Nuh's colleagues have not demonstrated that they have the self-control required to keep and bear firearms; they are to impetuous and full of themselves to be trusted with weapons of death.

In fact that rule that places guns in the hands of MPs and bodyguards at their beck and call should be repealed. If these people faced the same personal safety challenges ninety per cent of the citizens faced every day perhaps they would temper their words and concentrate their minds towards sorting out the public safety problems this nation clearly faces. If we do not trust them and some among us have less than benevolent intentions towards them it is their fault, not ours. The solution is not for the redeployment of scarce police manpower to keep philanderers safe from their irate spouses. Strip them all of their bodyguards. Yank their firearms licenses. If they don't sort out our problems, let them take their chances with the bandits and brigands just like we do.

Who gave them guns?!

I don't like it when unstable people are issued with firearms licenses and then permitted to wander among us armed to the teeth. I don't mean policemen; I have learned to live with the fear that a boy in blue will one day run amok at my place of work and turn his firearm against us because by the time he gets to the eighth floor, he will have run out of rounds; or hopefully he'll stop on the fourth floor and sort out our "administrative" problems once and for all. 

But I digress; I do not mean policemen should not carry firearms (even though they really shouldn't) but that elected representatives and "businessmen" with chips on their shoulders should not be issued with firearms licenses. They definitely should not be allowed to own firearms or bear them in public, if at all. Their mental instability has been chronicled in the pages of the nation's dailies for the past decade in which we have lived in fear of what they might do when the chips were down. This past week one of them discharged his licensed firearm at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport as he was handing it over to Kenya Airways staff prior to boarding a plane to Mombasa. The police tell us that no one was injured because at the time of the near-disaster, the firearm was "pointed in a safe direction."

Several things come to mind and not just the obvious ones like the exploding number of people with firearms who seem to be brandishing them or discharging them at airports. We haven't forgotten the arrogant Artur Brothers and their crass recklessness when they made the JKIA police authorities look like chumps in 2006. No, not that. The most interesting thing is that the Kenya Airports Authority, the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority, the National Police Service and Kenya Airways have a system for handling "VIPs" and their firearms when they pass through Kenya's airports: declare your firearm to the airline staff; hand it over to them in a "secure room"; board plane; travel; retrieve firearm; go on your merry way. I will worry now every time I board a plane in Kenya about how many firearms are on board, who has control of them and whether the ones who have control over the guns are as unstable as our elected representatives.

Something more insidious is apparent, though. That politician's firearm went off and the police are investigating whether the firearm is defective. They confiscated the firearm and allowed the MP to travel onwards to Mombasa. What should be of great concern to the thousands that pass through our domestic airports is that there are apparently untrained men and women carrying firearms in the airports who do not know how to properly handle those firearms.

We all remember the courage of Abdul Haji during the Westgate siege. We all recall his interviews after; during the siege he was calm enough to intervene in a dangerous situation without injuring any of his colleagues, unlike the members of the Kenya Defence Forces, or losing count of how many of his fourteen rounds he had fired. The MP-at-the-airport and his discharging firearm, on the other hand, raises doubts, serious ones too, that he even knows how many rounds his firearm holds, how to unload it, how to clean it or how to maintain it in a serviceable condition so that it does not accidentally go off in "sensitive" facilities such as airports.

Soon, hatutaomba serikali.

Every child fantisises that one day it will have a massive chunk of dough, a massive pile in Runda, a massive Mercedes-Benz and loads of fun with all four with its friends. Unless that child has been socialised in surroundings that have taken child abuse to hitherto unforeseen extremes, that child, if it is a lad, will not dream of a massive penis or the amount of sex it will enjoy because of the massive chunk of dough, the massive pile in Runda, the massive Mercedes-Benz or the massive penis. That, at least, was my impression until very, very recently.

No, I did not hear a boy extolling the virtues of phallic massiveness. And no, I did not hear a girl swooningly explain to her playmates what she would not do to behold, and be beheld, by phallic massiveness. What I heard ruined my dinner and put me off completely my drink. I couldn't even bring myself to consume some of BAT's finest blends because of the extreme degree of queasiness that suddenly assailed by lower intestines. Some of us have been unfortunate to be witness to depravities that would shock the conscience. So sometimes we think we have seen it all. Last night I was reminded that the mind of man is a spectacularly depraved one.

At that moment it occurred to me that the Man on the Street, as the standard that has been adopted for the reasonable person, must be re-evaluated if we are to confront the social schisms that threaten to rend asunder our nation and our coziest notions about who we are and what we are capable of. One of the most disturbing developments in the past few years has been the deaths of children over relatively small sums of money. Just yesterday a mother killed her child over twenty shillings. To the readers of this blog, twenty shillings is not a sum over which a child could be killed. To many, twenty shillings is the difference between a full meal after a long, hard day and a rumbling, empty stomach as one crawls into his beddings.

Mammon is the single important factor driving our every act today. It would not be such a prominent problem if we all earned a decent wage and were able to enjoy ourselves with relatively wild abandon. But la visit to Kenya's dying hotels at the coast and it is quite clear that the number of people who can enjoy themselves with any kind of abandon is quite small; the vast majority of the working masses can barely eke a living. Younger people are putting off families till much later than ever before. It is not just the needs of high education that are delaying births; the cost of raising a family in Kenya is getting ever more unsustainable. So we should expect ever greater numbers of parents killing their children over the loss of ever smaller sums of money.

We are all familiar with the Tunaomba Serikali phenomenon. A disaster strikes some place, or a negative trend becomes permanent, or our losses are the result of our greed. Whatever the reason be, we have witnessed Kenyans in abject circumstances begging their national government to do something. Much of the government, whether national or not, lives in opulent, comfortably leafy suburbia where their needs are met. All their needs are met. They want for nothing. But few of them pay for their wants through the sweat of their toil; they are the ticks that have sucked the cow of almost all its blood. They do it as a matter of right. They do it without a twinge of regret. They do not care that their insatiable avarice is the reason why mothers are killing their children over paltry twenty-shilling sums. They do it knowing that we will never set their comfortable lives on fire. Sooner, not later, we will prove them wrong.

Heckle away, good people.

Now that my initial post-Narok Schadenfreude has abated somewhat, and I have had the opportunity for further reflection, and I am quite sober, I believe that revisiting the question of whether or not political freedom should permit men and women to behave like a pack of hungry hyenas. President Kenyatta went to Migori and was heckled. The Governor organised a delegation to Nairobi to apologise. The President graciously accepted the apologies and asked the prosecuting authorities to let his hecklers free. So far the leader of the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy seems to be on the backfoot.

But the Leader of the Majority Party in the National Assembly seems not have gotten the memo; he is volubly and aggressively courting political damnation by his utterances. So too, it seems, is his newest coalition colleague, the Member for Gatundu South who recently threatened the Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs and International Trade with the sack for not implementing the motion of the National Assembly to "pull out of the Rome Statute." Messrs Duale and Kuria seem of a kind and they are determined to prove for all the world to see that in the verbal combat and histrionics of the political arena in Kenya, they are not to be trifled with.

Kenya has always had a sharp-elbowed political elite, one that got by using tricks best reserved for the underworld of crime and corruption. This elite has played its games often at the expense of the people. It has exploited social defects to its advantage: poverty, unemployment, marginalisation and hunger. It is doing so today with the calls for referenda by the Minority Party and select governors. It is doing so today with the highly charged and highly misunderstood question of the Senate's oversight powers over the county governments, especially governors.

The developments over the past year have been dispiriting. The political elite continues to use voters as political cannon fodder, sometimes with tragic results. The political elite lives a life of luxury and will do all in its power to maintain the lifestyle to which it has become accustomed. But it is doing so against the interests of the people it claims to speak for. As a result, political cannon fodder is used, misused and abused to foment trouble and instability while political leaders who appear combative in front of the cameras strike deals to keep themselves in truffles forever.

The people, therefore, should exercise their political freedom to heckle all and sundry among the political elite even if that elite be the President or Leaders of the Majority Party. We have suffered because of political decisions to which our contributions were elided and ignored. Therefore, whenever a politician makes a crass remark or commits an unconscionable act, we must be at liberty to demonstrate our displeasure in a remonstration that might involve missiles of one sort or the other. It is the price the political elite must pay for the power they enjoy to make our lives solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

Paranoia as a leadership tool.

The Government of Kenya has always been a very paranoid institution. Its paranoia was expressed in different ways, some creative, many crude. Its most effective, if that be the adjective, explorer of its paranoia was the provincial administration. It was a presidential "the walls have ears" facility of remarkable gossipy fecundity. It was the progenitor of death and destruction on a colossal scale. It received a plan all of its own when a new constitution was mooted. And yet four years down the constitutional road, the provincial administration thrives. It has proven to be remarkably resilient. Yet it has also changed and its changes are not for the better.

When we promulgated a constitution in 2010, one of its key elements was the restructuring of the provincial administration. The original idea was to disband it entirely. But the Committee of Experts, just like all other institutions in Kenya, was captured by the securocrats in Mwai Kibaki's government and persuaded that in a time of transition, in a hostile neighbourhood, and a bitterly contested election down the road, the people needed a tried-and-tested institution to assure them of their safety. Thus we ended up with the tepid "restructuring" clause, and not even in the body of the Constitution but as a section in the Sixth Schedule.

Since the promulgation, the pervasive growth of the securocracy has been unrelenting. The rebranded provincial administration is here to stay. Whatever the civil society industry may have wanted, this vestigial artifact of the colonial era is here to stay. Its tentacles are spreading too. The Special Branch was completely reformed under the imaginative Wilson Boinet. There are calls for a reversal of the reforms; there are those that would like to see the dreaded Special Branch resurrected in its original form. The National Intelligence Service that the retired Brig Gen Boinet established is looked at with suspicion by those who do not have an idea about what an intelligence service does. The newly appointed Philip Kameru should keep this in mind as he sorts out the inter-agency relationships with the rest of the securocracy.

In recent months it has become clear that security challenges have overwhelmed the National Executive. This might be an erroneous view; after all, the paranoid securocrats will not tom-tom their successes because quite frequently, their successes come at the expense of the people. Human rights abuses, that phrase that is the bread and butter of Boniface Mwangi and those of his ilk in the civil society industry, define the securocracy and maintain their paranoia at an extremely high level. In response to these challenges, rather than clear up the operational deficiencies they face by streamlining operations, reducing reporting levels and decentralising decision-making for efficiency and speed, securocrats are demanding ever greater, undefined, powers whose utility remains murky at best. It is why in national intelligence there are calls to grant intelligence officers the authority to arrest or detain, reforms in national policing seem to have ceased, and the Inspector-General is being placed in charge of non-police units such as the National Youth Service, the Kenya Forest Service and the Kenya Wildlife Service and all their disciplined personnel and equipment.

The paranoia of senior government officials leads them to see conspiracies where none exist. It creates monsters where there are none. The only reason why the Leader of the Majority Party in the National Assembly and like-minded windbags are extremely worried about the ruling of the International Criminal Court regarding the presence of the President at the status conference at The Hague in October. And why Isaac Ruto looks as if he is going to bust a gut over the political theatre by the Majority Leader. And why the Pesa Mashinani campaign has spooked so many national government windbags.

Code of THUG LIFE

1. All new Jacks to the game must know: a) He’s going to get rich. b) He’s going to jail. c) He’s going to die.

2. Crew Leaders: You are responsible for legal/financial payment commitments to crew members; your word must be your bond.

3. One crew’s rat is every crew’s rat. Rats are now like a disease; sooner or later we all get it; and they should too.

4. Crew leader and posse should select a diplomat, and should work ways to settle disputes. In unity, there is strength!

5. Car jacking in our Hood is against the Code.

6. Slinging to children is against the Code.

7. Having children slinging is against the Code.

8. No slinging in schools.

9. Since the rat Nicky Barnes opened his mouth, ratting has become accepted by some. We’re not having it.

10. Snitches is outta here.

11. The Boys in Blue don’t run nothing; we do. Control the Hood, and make it safe for squares.

12. No slinging to pregnant Sisters. That’s baby killing; that’s genocide!

13. Know your target, who’s the real enemy.

14. Civilians are not a target and should be spared.

15. Harm to children will not be forgiven.

16. Attacking someone’s home where their family is known to reside, must be altered or checked.

17. Senseless brutality and rape must stop.

18. Our old folks must not be abused.

19. Respect our Sisters. Respect our Brothers.

20. Sisters in the Life must be respected if they respect themselves.

21. Military disputes concerning business areas within the community must be handled professionally and not on the block.

22. No shooting at parties.

23. Concerts and parties are neutral territories; no shooting!

24. Know the Code; it’s for everyone.

25. Be a real ruff neck. Be down with the code of the Thug Life.

26. Protect yourself at all times..

Some other Interpretations:

Thug Life means - The Hate U Gave Lil'' Infants Fucks Everyone.

NIGGA means - Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished.

OUTLAW stands for ''Operating Under Thug Laws As Warriors''

MOB stands for Member Of Bloods and /or Money Over Bitches

Code OF THUG LIFE:

1. All new Jacks to the game must know: a) He’s going to get rich. b) He’s going to jail. c) He’s going to die.

2. Crew Leaders: You are responsible for legal/financial payment commitments to crew members; your word must be your bond.

3. One crew’s rat is every crew’s rat. Rats are now like a disease; sooner or later we all get it; and they should too.

4. Crew leader and posse should select a diplomat, and should work ways to settle disputes. In unity, there is strength!

5. Car jacking in our Hood is against the Code.

6. Slinging to children is against the Code.

7. Having children slinging is against the Code.

8. No slinging in schools.

9. Since the rat Nicky Barnes opened his mouth; ratting has become accepted by some. We’re not having it.

10. Snitches is outta here.

11. The Boys in Blue don’t run nothing; we do. Control the Hood, and make it safe for squares.

12. No slinging to pregnant Sisters. That’s baby killing; that’s genocide!

13. Know your target, who’s the real enemy.

14. Civilians are not a target and should be spared.

15. Harm to children will not be forgiven.

16. Attacking someone’s home where their family is known to reside, must be altered or checked.

17. Senseless brutality and rape must stop.

18. Our old folks must not be abused.

19. Respect our Sisters. Respect our Brothers.

20. Sisters in the Life must be respected if they respect themselves.

21. Military disputes concerning business areas within the community must be handled professionally and not on the block.

22. No shooting at parties.

23. Concerts and parties are neutral territories; no shooting!

24. Know the Code; it’s for everyone.

25. Be a real ruff neck. Be down with the code of the Thug Life.

26. Protect yourself at all times..


Some other Interpretations:

Thug Life means - The Hate U Gave Lil'' Infants Fucks Everyone.

NIGGA means - Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished.

OUTLAW stands for ''Operating Under Thug Laws As Warriors''

MOB stands for Member Of Bloods and /or Money Over Bitches
- See more at: http://www.thuglifearmy.com/code-of-thug-life.html#sthash.E0V4Nj7S.dpuf

Code OF THUG LIFE:

1. All new Jacks to the game must know: a) He’s going to get rich. b) He’s going to jail. c) He’s going to die.

2. Crew Leaders: You are responsible for legal/financial payment commitments to crew members; your word must be your bond.

3. One crew’s rat is every crew’s rat. Rats are now like a disease; sooner or later we all get it; and they should too.

4. Crew leader and posse should select a diplomat, and should work ways to settle disputes. In unity, there is strength!

5. Car jacking in our Hood is against the Code.

6. Slinging to children is against the Code.

7. Having children slinging is against the Code.

8. No slinging in schools.

9. Since the rat Nicky Barnes opened his mouth; ratting has become accepted by some. We’re not having it.

10. Snitches is outta here.

11. The Boys in Blue don’t run nothing; we do. Control the Hood, and make it safe for squares.

12. No slinging to pregnant Sisters. That’s baby killing; that’s genocide!

13. Know your target, who’s the real enemy.

14. Civilians are not a target and should be spared.

15. Harm to children will not be forgiven.

16. Attacking someone’s home where their family is known to reside, must be altered or checked.

17. Senseless brutality and rape must stop.

18. Our old folks must not be abused.

19. Respect our Sisters. Respect our Brothers.

20. Sisters in the Life must be respected if they respect themselves.

21. Military disputes concerning business areas within the community must be handled professionally and not on the block.

22. No shooting at parties.

23. Concerts and parties are neutral territories; no shooting!

24. Know the Code; it’s for everyone.

25. Be a real ruff neck. Be down with the code of the Thug Life.

26. Protect yourself at all times..


Some other Interpretations:

Thug Life means - The Hate U Gave Lil'' Infants Fucks Everyone.

NIGGA means - Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished.

OUTLAW stands for ''Operating Under Thug Laws As Warriors''

MOB stands for Member Of Bloods and /or Money Over Bitches
- See more at: http://www.thuglifearmy.com/code-of-thug-life.html#sthash.E0V4Nj7S.dpuf