We exalt them, yet they’ve enslaved us

A country is known by who it considers its heroes. Columbia had Pablo Escobar. Escobar spent millions of dollars convincing the people that he was a 1970’s Robin Hood- robbing the wealthy to feed the poor.

So effective was he that he was elected to office. His power was unmatched and he thought himself untouchable and infallible. He committed crimes with reckless abandon sure that he would never be touched.

Blind support

He was wrong. One day he was arrested, and placed in a prison of his own making. When he was to be moved to the normal prison he ran away, becoming a wanted fugitive.

The people from his hometown of Medellin were heartbroken, their hero, the one who rescued them in distress and gave them handouts was now a wanted criminal.

Kenya now finds itself in a similar situation. Where we are sympathising with the suspects of our time.

When leaders are arrested it is quite common to hear a lot of us profess their undying support and endless prayers for them.

They declare that the arrest is the devil’s work and that shetani ashindwe. I always wonder to myself who is the devil?

The corrupt leaders or the police who arrest them? When we say shetani ashindwe, to which devil do we refer to? The devil who stole our millions or the “devil” who arrests thieves who steal from us? Our God must be very confused by our prayers.

Kenya needs a radical relook at what we value and what we ask God for. On Sunday, we pray for God to heal our country and clean it out, by Tuesday we are telling God that our “beloved” leader, now arraigned, must be saved.

Which prayer should God answer? How will Kenya be clean if we don’t clean out the dirt?

Love for bread crumbs

In Kenya, every single politician who has been arraigned on corruption charges seems to have a group of people who worship the ground they walk on. These people have made these suspects heroes and their support is unwavering despite the fact that they all say they want a new Kenya.

We are like the house slaves of the American South, who loved slavery for it afforded them access to the crumbs at the master’s table.

The same is true in our republic; those who eat the measly crumbs of the corrupt master’s table are also the ones who defend the master’s crimes the most.

This is the same peril that befell Columbia and it took them years to recover from the effect of people viewing criminals as heroes, and if we are not careful we will soon end up in this same scenario.

For in Kenya our MPs are more harambee donors than they are thinkers and lawmakers. Their activities in churches on Sunday are more important than attending parliamentary proceedings between Monday and Friday. We care not where they get the donations, we only care that we eat the crumbs off the rich man’s table.

The net effect is we will not have the country we pray for because we are the ones working against our prayers. The wool is pulled over our eyes by handouts, harambee donations.

All of which we don’t realise are likely funded by ourselves, our taxes, our blood and sweat. Like Pablo Escobar, some politicians have perfected the art of stealing and robbing the poor in secret and then turning around and publicly praising God and showering another set of poor people with gifts to sing their praises.

Until the day we denounce handouts, we will forever remain the slaves of our political masters. Whipped and thrown about.

They will tell us to hate the slaves in the field who are suffering in the sun, while we live in the house, cleaning up our master’s mess and thanking him for the crumbs he bestows on us. Oh how we forget: Our master is rich because our brothers are enslaved.

Political martyrs?

When a politician is arrested, they are not being martyred. Justice is being delivered. If we keep crying foul every time one is arrested then our fate will be sealed by our own paradoxical approach to life. Either we want a clean Kenya where criminals are arrested and have to defend themselves or we want a dirty Kenya where criminals hire us to defend them loudly on the streets, pray for them in our churches and weep for them.

We must change to realise that handouts, harambees, personal rescue teams are not life-changing initiatives. They simply maintain our poverty and our addiction to politicians. Our lives will not change if we depend on a few leaders to give us crumbs.

Our lives will change when we realise there is no rich man coming to rescue us. We must rescue ourselves, and instead of waiting on and living on breadcrumbs, we might be better placed if we learned how to bake.

Kenyans need to stop praying and crying on behalf of our leaders and instead cry and pray for our children who need a better Kenya where they will thrive. Instead of working, dancing, and sweating for politicians we need to work, dance and sweat for ourselves.

Kenyans must learn quickly that our politicians are not generous, they are tactical: they make us poor so they can buy us cheap. Indeed, ask yourself if we were not poor how many harambees would we need? Then ask who is responsible for making us rich, and who has made us poor? Your answer is as good as mine.

Mr Bichachi is a communication consultant. bichachi@gmail.com