51 years down the line, we have little to show for our independence

Receive greetings from Emanyulia, the evergreen land of peace and harmony. Here is wishing you happy holidays in this festive season. The people here have been talking about a portrait they have often seen in the press at this time of the year. It shows a youthful and jubilant Mwai Kibaki with Tom Mboya, who went away young. The two are literally swinging in space in a jovial tango.

Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, adjacent to them, waves at the photographer with the dignified satisfaction of fulfillment.

The time was May 1963. Kanu had just swept the boards in the independence elections. The mood was infectious, our elders tell us. Self-determination was at hand.

It followed a few days later, on June 1, with Madaraka. Kenya became internally self-governing, from the British. They had ruled over us for 43 years as a colony. We had been their protectorate for another 25 years before – making for 68 years in all. Six months after this joyous photograph was taken, we became a republic on December 12, with full independence. We took up our place in the global assembly of free nations. Does the joyous mood of 1963 appear to have swiftly paved the way to frustration, despair and loss of patience with each other?

Did our self-internal government become self-infernal government? We have strayed far from the joy and dream of yesteryears.

Fifty-one years later, we have certainly become a rich landscape of anger, mistrust and adversarial engagement. We are in our element when our engines are charged on pure bile.

As I file this column, the 51st Jamhuri anniversary is only a few hours away. You will read what I am writing sometime after the celebrations. I am prayerful that the national leadership will do it differently, this time. I fear it will not. That is the norm. National days are occasions for spewing anger, pointing fingers and banging tables.

After the level headedness that informs official written texts, we sink into frantic rage about people who don’t agree with us. We have lost interest in the art of persuasion.

Some have never bothered to pick it up, at all. This is not in Government alone. It is everywhere. At home, it is not important to persuade our families about anything. We kill them, if they don’t see our point.

At work – in Government and in the private sector – you know everything simply because you are the boss. Some occupy positions of leadership without being leaders. Their credo is simple, “It is my way, or the highway. If you don’t agree with me, you find another place to move to.”

Political parties have perfected the art of intolerance. Elsewhere in the world, a political outfit has a right, left and centre.

 

In our context, things are either white or black. There are no grey areas, no space for alternative opinion. Here in Emanyulia our people say where one thing stands, another one can stand there besides it.

In my country Kenya, we don’t think so – if we think at all. The boss is always right. S/he is the only one allowed to “think.” And so we scream when we should be crystalising and underscoring our point of view. We don’t bother to overwhelm our opponent with the weight of fact, reason and logic.

Where did this rain begin beating us? Of course the rain began beating us after we got inside the house. First, we developed huge appetites for free things.

Those in power learnt that you eat where you work. Since then, everyone lands in their new office feverishly trying their rodent teeth on virtually everything in sight.

They are at once trying to eat through the metallic legs of the office furniture and the wooden cabinets. They are looking for good boys and girls they can “work with.”

Everybody else is demonised. They will do everything to smoke you out of the place. Even public servants say things like, “We must do everything to make sure that this man leaves this place.

He cannot work here.”This is what people who work in Government tell us. The higher you go, the “cooler” it becomes. And so we have hostile people everywhere, spewing venom. Our focus is skewed. Our self-determination means we are free to misrule ourselves. Ours is “self-deharmination.” It is actualised in the thinking that might makes right.

When you get into powerful new office, therefore, you are suddenly transformed into the wisest person in that environment. In any event, you must be. For if the task is just to eat everything in sight, do you really need to listen to anybody?

Years down the line, we have run down everything. Here in Emanyulia we are praying for a Jamhuri season that will bring us a sense of renewal. We recall that Mzee Kenyatta used to tell us that he had brought down an elephant on  December 12, 1963. We recall that he used to urge everyone to hone their knives and deal with the carcass their own way.

Now we know this was a false start. We reduced our republic and its resources into a carcass for the hounds. We became scrambling hounds. We scramble and scream for everything. We scramble for space on the highways.

We kill ourselves in speed in our cars, drunk on alcohol and other foreign substances, all voluntarily administered upon ourselves – especially in this festive season. We scramble for office and office space, sometimes literally fighting over who should sit where and who should not. We scramble for inclusion on committees in the place of work, because we smell bribes. We scramble for official cars – sometimes the boss keeping the entire fleet for himself while everybody else can go to hell, for all s/he cares.

At home, parents scramble for everything against their families.

Blind greed, laced with ignorant arrogance, rules us, even in the place of worship. We clothe it in impatience and a false sense of important urgency. We drive it home with loud mouths against those with alternative views, and especially those whose seasoned brainpower we cannot match. We can always count on the tyranny of office to get it our way.

Fifty-one years after independence, we turn and turn in the widening gyre of greed, arrogance and mediocrity – everywhere. We steal and cheat in exams, even in universities. To secure our mediocrity, we issue draconian edicts and enact ill-advised dictatorial laws.

Fifty-one years after independence. Now with the National Assembly’s latest enactment on security on the eve of Jamhuri, one thing is clear. We will go through worse times before we can know better times. Brace yourself up for the crucible, Kenya. The storms are gathering yet again.