Cry my beloved Kenya, conscience truly dead

This would even shock the devil. Amid the panic and pain occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic, a cabal of callous crooks, it appears, has been making a kill - literarily and figuratively.

They sourced inferior Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) whose cost they heartlessly inflated thus frustrating the battle against the pandemic. Were a bit of moral sensibility injected in this enterprise, a few souls would still be alive.  

But the PPE fiasco is just the latest in a long and twisted plot that has always seen a select few profiting by thrusting millions of people into clutches of indigence, indignity and death.

There is a time some folks even conspired to steal a cemetery, the only last place for souls to rest undisturbed. They have starved the poor through maize racketeering, and killed others through imported poisonous food.

Funds meant for mega projects that would uplift poor lives, are mindlessly stolen. It’s a long catalogue that’s horrifying and depressing.

But then, why are we OK with this gross anomaly? There is an eerie silence, social acceptance even, of every form of plunder or mismanagement in Kenya. Besides, see, culprits sit pretty, unbothered by the disgrace and anguish they cause.

Selfish ends

You can only manipulate systems for selfish ends, pilfer, or just be reckless in the epic scales Kenyan style when your conscience is dead. And this is whence discomfiture stems.

The conscience is a powerful sovereign internal legislative system of rational beings. This mechanism knows the right and wrong. It automatically triggers distress upon acts that offend established moral systems. In its absence, the sense of guilt or shame is diminished.

Guilt and shame are regulatory agents of behaviour. So powerful, they produce a sense of inferiority and worthlessness on individuals as a response to socially distasteful behaviour. If culprits were jolted by shame or guilt, their malevolent urges would be tamed.

Yet, that’s not the case. Ours is a network of avaricious, vicious, uncouth and predatory characters who will not stop at anything to make a buck including causing deaths. Nothing is taboo. For you to cause such pain to humanity you must have undergone radical transformation. You must have lost every sense of the human spirit. You must reconstruct other human beings, in your imaginations, to appear like vermin. In essence, you must commit an act of mass dehumanisation in your heart and mind.

Clearly, these hubristic charlatans on the prowl, feasting on our blood, have crossed the cosmological divide to the realm of the dark forces to execute their odious schemes.  For, it’s only in the milieu of the dark that conception and discharge of such intolerable vices flourish.

Once in such a realm, they’re deprived of what Immanuel Kant, in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, calls the “goodwill”. Yet, the goodwill is the core of all moral imperatives.  It sets our species apart.

Moral sense

Even the evolutionist, the legendary Charles Darwin, observed as much in his seminal work, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871).

Says he: “I fully subscribe to the judgment of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animals the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important.”

That’s why we should be petrified by the profiteering cabals in our midst, most of them extremely influential, determining our daily lives. The savagery only means more pain. How can humanity’s fate be in the hands of beasts?

And then, pray, tell, just what happens in those corridors of power such that admission recreates mental frames that are morally asymmetrical? What jabs do people in power get that sterilises their moral machines?

And this lunacy has accomplices - spouses, children, friends, parents and fans who even consider the disenfranchisement as an entitlement. God help us. Virtue is thought to be cowardice; vice is courage- success, blessings!

Therefore, even as authorities seek to prosecute the felons, Kenya, we need to talk. We must confess there’s a pathological moral paralysis especially on those entrusted with our fortunes.  We need to reconstruct humane sensibilities and a society that’s anchored on sound value system. Transparency should also be integrated in public dealings to afford scrutiny. It would pay too with a public that is civically conscious. An angry public.

- The writer is a communication adviser and an analyst on international relations. [email protected] Twitter: @manjis