I love peaceniks - the promoters, purveyors and winners of peace. I celebrate the Nobel Peace Prize with each annual laureate. Yet, deep down, I know peace to be a philosophical fraud. As an ideal, it is invaluable for the individual and the world. That, however, does not in any way mean it is worth half the effort we expend on it as societies.
To my mind, peace is a lull, a period of stagnation, like upon the surface of a pond. A river, though, is not a peaceful thing, because it is always hurrying downstream over rocks, rapids and falls. Ocean shores, on the other hand, are presumed to be places of repose and peace, because their constant ebbs and flows express certainty, repetition and predictability.
Such is a facade that fools the feeble-minded. In their hurry to appear sophisticated, they flock to beaches to seek for peace, in total disregard of the truism that wherever you go, there you are. What peace, I say!
In kind, peace is absence of conflict, strife or disconcerting endeavour. It is acceptance of one's situation, of one's weaknesses and subjugation, or the attainment of a mental ideal. Normally, it is never the weak man that seeks peace. It usually is the strong that promote peace. Because, when peace reigns, the strong rein, and the weak suffer.
But you cannot claim peace if and when that peace is won for you by default - by the stronger ignoring the weaker. Those in ascendancy and in power will sing the praises of peace, until the weak ones take it for a good thing. They praise peace because it promotes their purposes, and as such, is in their own interest. The peace I can invest in is the peace of the weak man; the peace of the downtrodden, which can only be credentialed by the ending of weakness, and the absolute rise of equality.
Surprisingly, the strong man, the endowed man, the rich and powerful man, society or nation will never rest in peace until his or its needs are met. Not until their ambitions are fulfilled. No; not until they get what they must. And the permutations of effort, trial, pacification, treaty, trade, war, annihilation or subterfuge they apply to attain their aims are always such as that disturb the highly vaunted peace.
Credit the resilience of the enduring human spirit for the glory of its hope and the vitality of its dreams, because the wake of the strong is a rancid paean to devastation and desolation. The strong man wreaks harm and horror in the pursuit of his victory. The strong man wins peace at the expense of the weak.
Let me think of it as this: If somebody sought air in the African Savannah, would that be a real pursuit? If you can have peace by doing nothing, and allowing everyone else to do as they deem pleasant, is that really a fair exchange? No.
Societies have peace that are constantly in flux, in self doubt, in an unremitting pursuit of purpose, and in the constant search for meaning. Societies have peace that promise it to all and grant it to all, fairly equally.
Societies win peace by overcoming their challenges and obstacles, by winning their freedoms and exercising them - not by decrees, defeat or silence.
The man is not sincere who advises a poor, hungry and denied compatriot to observe peace. Such advice is fraudulent, because the poor, hungry, and dispossessed man has no peace - he has serious and powerful needs stacked against him.
Indeed, why should such a person be peaceful at all? Who has peace of mind in the presence of hunger, disease, ignorance and poverty? What is peace without opportunity?
Therefore, it is a waste of time pursuing peace, without providing tangible opportunities for each man, according to their desires and hopes. Ultimately, the opportunities available to each man are what will assure societal peace; the chance to live a life after one's own heart; the freedom to live life to the fullness of one's hungers for expression, is the only bulwark of human peace.
Doubtlessly, such free choice will result in some man here or somewhere else oversimplifying their perceptions of freedom, and infringing on the sensibilities and preferences of others. Such fluky exceptions being always in the minority, affirm the conclusion that this pursuit of talents, this uninhibited granting of choices, is the right path ahead.
There really cannot be peace without every person claiming the capacity to win and keep it. Humanity would demand that we address all our personal and communal needs fervently, and afford for all of us the promises of peace, but not necessarily ask men and women to uphold a peace that is absent and unreachable to them.
Whenever citizens are weak and dispossessed, poor and uncatered for, their peace is false. Theirs is no peace at all.
___________________________________________
'My Price' is a series of articles about my values as a man, and my views about some of humanity's most important ideas. The articles are not arranged in any order, and address issues as they will occur to me on my journey of life. While I may quote other people or rely on their advice, what I write here is my commission. I hope my price will be a price worth paying.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Here's how to create 3 million jobs and grow at 20%.
I share these ideas in the hope that they will change the fortunes of my nation. I share these thoughts, as a moral obligation to my generation and our common offspring, as a patriot's remit. Partly to offer leadership out of our economic and political morass, and as a repayment for the opportunities that Kenya has offered me. And to spell out my vision for an Africa that has come of age, and steadied itself for the long leap that sustained, common prosperity demands. I hope to inspire actions that will push and finally lift Kenya over the high horizon of hopelessness that has prevented us from reaching the promised land; from attaining our heritage of splendour.
Our zero-sum politics, xenophobic, tribalist society, burgeoning hordes of disillusioned youth and a leadership that leaks courage and lacks conviction have been our fate for too long. Yet, that is not as it should be at all. Indeed, as any sensible person knows, much gathers more and loss leads to greater loss. Our challenges are bound to grow, and our few opportunities will only lessen, if we fail to stand up for good, to reject the worse and choose the better way out.
All of our good people will be safer in the long run, if they offer and effect positive solutions. And again, their little good efforts will gather more, and cause ever larger gains. Convinced thus, here is my way out; my considered view of an immediate solution: a solid path out of the palpable despondency and obvious distress in whose vicious swirl millions of Africans find themselves inundated.
How To Create Three Million Jobs Immediately.
It might appear simpler than you credit - too simple, in fact.
The government should offer minimum interest long-tenure mortgages to qualifying citizens. Let us give Kes. 2.5 million at 4 per cent interest rate, to build decent homes, to every person who earns Kes 40,000 or more a month, payable over a term of 25 years. Let us give this to our policemen, teachers and soldiers every year, for the next two decades to create 10 million homes for every person.
Why this is important:
First, decent housing is a core promise of our Constitution. It is a progressively attainable right under our Bill of Rights. Secondly, the real estate sector, as presently structured, is privately driven in the free market, which profits from shortages, and caters only to the already rich. And private sector real estate growth is predominantly urban orientated. It is controlled by fewer than 100 companies which are limited by financing and administrative bottlenecks. Thirdly, and most critically, this idea will create three million jobs each year.
From a psychological stand-point, a decent home is a spur to social decency and increased economic aspiration. Consider a child raised in the opulent greenery of Runda and Kitisuru, and another in the filthy trenches of Mukuru and Mathare. Their outlook on life is to a larger than acceptable extent, determined by the sanitation of their environments. I am persuaded to think that housing impacts self-esteem and an estimation of social worth. And that is a possibility I would want to sponsor. If children will want more than their parents had, I would rather we prop up present age parents, so as to raise motivated future parents whose worldviews will be unlimited and very vibrant.
On the jobs score: let's start with lending out Kes. 2.5 million to 50.000 Kenyans to build 50,000 new homes all across the countryside per year. Assume, for a second - no, truly think long and hard about it - that, this will create direct employment to 3 million workers:-
Housing Influences People
Housing changes tastes and preferences, and substantially redirects economic choices. It is the perfect starting point to a growing and working nation, since people will generally protect and promote their own personal wealth and private interest. The people will be more tolerant of their neighbours and will defend peace in their neighbourhoods, as they have interest in national peace, to preserve what they will have worked hard to own. Homeless people are more easily agitated against home owners or their more prosperous communicants.
Government
Improving housing will increase demand for government accountability and action, as people will demand services like wastes treatment, improvements in transport infrastructure and spread of opportunities for skills training, employment and local investments. It will lead to technical training of youth in construction skills, and create opportunities for employment across the country, and people from good homes are more likely to seek self improvement and better opportunities, both within and outside their communities..
Women and mothers will demand better nutritional and health choices, improving our nation's overall state of national health. Better housing will spread access to durable, higher quality home appliances, higher access to information and literacy through television, digital radio and the internet, and better choices in leadership. Better standards of life will improve attention to matters of national importance, and increase interest in government policy, with the expected improvements in demand for more focused leadership.
Women's & Youth Economic Empowerment
When our women and youth are assured of good homes, they will invest emotionally and economically in their societies, seeking value in themselves and lower social tensions. It is the shield and cross-spears of our national coat-of-arms that will defend our peace and deliver the promise of a proud and rich homeland of Kenya, a new home for people with vast opportunities for progressive action.
But most importantly, increasing the gross national housing capital will reduce the housing inflation - artificially exploited by the private sector to make prices of homes unaffordable and prohibitive. It will keep our youth busy, and reduce the despondency and economic exclusion that keeps them bitter and easily prone to political exploitation and irresponsibility.
Hope and Progress
It will engender hope in the idea of Kenya, promote academic and economic effort to earn higher incomes that will qualify individuals into the promise of this programme, and higher incomes will improve family nutritional and health prospects, stabilizing birth rates. Great housing will be its own collateral, its own security and our nation's path towards faster devolution of government and social equality. It will be the first step to national transformation, and a guarantee of our cultural progress.
Again, mortgages will afford everyone the owner-occupier housing tax-breaks for families, reducing their tax burdens and increasing their purchasing power, hence lowering poverty. It will save women from total dependence on men for shelter, and improve their socio-economic independence.
For these and all the other reasons and ideas you will associate with this call, and which my thought has engendered in your mind, this is Kenya's most urgent agenda, and I enthusiastically promise to pursue it with all people of goodwill and similar opinion.
Our zero-sum politics, xenophobic, tribalist society, burgeoning hordes of disillusioned youth and a leadership that leaks courage and lacks conviction have been our fate for too long. Yet, that is not as it should be at all. Indeed, as any sensible person knows, much gathers more and loss leads to greater loss. Our challenges are bound to grow, and our few opportunities will only lessen, if we fail to stand up for good, to reject the worse and choose the better way out.
All of our good people will be safer in the long run, if they offer and effect positive solutions. And again, their little good efforts will gather more, and cause ever larger gains. Convinced thus, here is my way out; my considered view of an immediate solution: a solid path out of the palpable despondency and obvious distress in whose vicious swirl millions of Africans find themselves inundated.
How To Create Three Million Jobs Immediately.
It might appear simpler than you credit - too simple, in fact.
The government should offer minimum interest long-tenure mortgages to qualifying citizens. Let us give Kes. 2.5 million at 4 per cent interest rate, to build decent homes, to every person who earns Kes 40,000 or more a month, payable over a term of 25 years. Let us give this to our policemen, teachers and soldiers every year, for the next two decades to create 10 million homes for every person.
Why this is important:
First, decent housing is a core promise of our Constitution. It is a progressively attainable right under our Bill of Rights. Secondly, the real estate sector, as presently structured, is privately driven in the free market, which profits from shortages, and caters only to the already rich. And private sector real estate growth is predominantly urban orientated. It is controlled by fewer than 100 companies which are limited by financing and administrative bottlenecks. Thirdly, and most critically, this idea will create three million jobs each year.
From a psychological stand-point, a decent home is a spur to social decency and increased economic aspiration. Consider a child raised in the opulent greenery of Runda and Kitisuru, and another in the filthy trenches of Mukuru and Mathare. Their outlook on life is to a larger than acceptable extent, determined by the sanitation of their environments. I am persuaded to think that housing impacts self-esteem and an estimation of social worth. And that is a possibility I would want to sponsor. If children will want more than their parents had, I would rather we prop up present age parents, so as to raise motivated future parents whose worldviews will be unlimited and very vibrant.
On the jobs score: let's start with lending out Kes. 2.5 million to 50.000 Kenyans to build 50,000 new homes all across the countryside per year. Assume, for a second - no, truly think long and hard about it - that, this will create direct employment to 3 million workers:-
- Three sand harvesters per lorry of sand, 10 lorries per home: 30 on 50,000 = 1.5 million;
- Two workers on each lorry ferrying sand = 100,000 lorry transport jobs, assured.
- Three workers producing each concrete building block, 3000 blocks per home = 9,000 by 50,000.
- Market and jobs in the cement production and stone-masonry and hardware businesses.
- A construction tradesman and four assistants working on each home = 200,000 jobs
- a) Wood workers making windows and doors, three per new home, 20,000 homes: 60,000 jobs supporting the carpentry and timber sector, creating market for wood products, and improving furniture standards around the country.
- b) Metal workers forging steel doors and windows on 30,000 homes: 90,000 jobs to support the steel market, and improve skills in the housing supplies sector.
- Three workers on each roof: 150,000 jobs. A huge market for roofing materials - wood, tiles, iron-sheets, ceiling materials, chimneys, - support for 450,000 sector jobs;
- 10,000 electricians and power installation jobs; 10,000 power inspectors, and 50,000 new customers for the electricity market, creating more background jobs: an assured market for manufacturing of housing supplies, increased demand, production efficiencies, supply chain efficiences, profitability.
- 10,000 plumbers, and increasing demand for water and sewerage services, perhaps 20,000 new jobs created in expanding that sector.
- Overall increase in transportation of supplies will provide a market for transport business owners, increase road fuel purchases, earning revenues for government and sustaining jobs.
- Home equipping after construction: painting, fencing, garbage collection, upholstery and furnishing, household energy - better homes will encourage uptake of better energy sources - i.e. less firewood, more biogas, liquefied petroleum gas, solar power and mains electricity, about 200,000 related jobs.
And the total annual cost is almost minimal: Kes. 2.5 million on 50,000 homes is Kes. 125 billion only, all invested in Kenya, with the related stimulus impact you can imagine. And it will be productive, not consumptive capital expenditure, to boot.
Housing Influences People
Housing changes tastes and preferences, and substantially redirects economic choices. It is the perfect starting point to a growing and working nation, since people will generally protect and promote their own personal wealth and private interest. The people will be more tolerant of their neighbours and will defend peace in their neighbourhoods, as they have interest in national peace, to preserve what they will have worked hard to own. Homeless people are more easily agitated against home owners or their more prosperous communicants.
Government
Improving housing will increase demand for government accountability and action, as people will demand services like wastes treatment, improvements in transport infrastructure and spread of opportunities for skills training, employment and local investments. It will lead to technical training of youth in construction skills, and create opportunities for employment across the country, and people from good homes are more likely to seek self improvement and better opportunities, both within and outside their communities..
Women and mothers will demand better nutritional and health choices, improving our nation's overall state of national health. Better housing will spread access to durable, higher quality home appliances, higher access to information and literacy through television, digital radio and the internet, and better choices in leadership. Better standards of life will improve attention to matters of national importance, and increase interest in government policy, with the expected improvements in demand for more focused leadership.
Women's & Youth Economic Empowerment
When our women and youth are assured of good homes, they will invest emotionally and economically in their societies, seeking value in themselves and lower social tensions. It is the shield and cross-spears of our national coat-of-arms that will defend our peace and deliver the promise of a proud and rich homeland of Kenya, a new home for people with vast opportunities for progressive action.
But most importantly, increasing the gross national housing capital will reduce the housing inflation - artificially exploited by the private sector to make prices of homes unaffordable and prohibitive. It will keep our youth busy, and reduce the despondency and economic exclusion that keeps them bitter and easily prone to political exploitation and irresponsibility.
Hope and Progress
It will engender hope in the idea of Kenya, promote academic and economic effort to earn higher incomes that will qualify individuals into the promise of this programme, and higher incomes will improve family nutritional and health prospects, stabilizing birth rates. Great housing will be its own collateral, its own security and our nation's path towards faster devolution of government and social equality. It will be the first step to national transformation, and a guarantee of our cultural progress.
Again, mortgages will afford everyone the owner-occupier housing tax-breaks for families, reducing their tax burdens and increasing their purchasing power, hence lowering poverty. It will save women from total dependence on men for shelter, and improve their socio-economic independence.
For these and all the other reasons and ideas you will associate with this call, and which my thought has engendered in your mind, this is Kenya's most urgent agenda, and I enthusiastically promise to pursue it with all people of goodwill and similar opinion.
Monday, February 20, 2012
The Coming of Power - Preparing the Lake Basin to Lead Kenya
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, said a British statesman of the past. He spoke for all time in these seven words.
Power without Preparation
But there is no greater corrupter than power attained without preparation. Most people go into politics with the very best intentions. In fact, the majority of leaders are amazingly superb souls: better humans than most would anticipate, upon first hearing the bleak histories of their failings and weaknesses. Yet, in all circumstances, the corruption and odium that reflects their tenures and blights their age is embodied in the exertions and over-zealous actions of their supporters.
It should not come as a surprise that most traditions insist on moulding and mentoring future power-wielders. Monarchies and organisations, homes and businesses are known to identify future leaders and to train them for the wise performance of their expected social authorities and responsibilities.
Apprenticeeship
Understudies and apprentices learn over time and become so good that at the onset of their appointed time, everything flows seamlessly. This important preparation is almost a lifelong calling. For example, if Queen Elizabeth II - of the United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland - if she were to leave her majestic and powerful offices for any given reason, few expect to feel a blip of the scales of state, because her heir apparent, Prince Charles, is so thoroughly prepared to be King that his talents are awasting...
When I say few, I especially refer to her subjects, both loyal and disloyal, as well as the rest of the global public. And that is my foremost intention. The world would remain stable as is, if Charles became King today, because we are long mentally prepared for the circumstance.
Power in new hands
To return to Kenya, it is fated that there will be a new president, yet none of the 'probable presidents' has prepared his or her people for power. There is absolute need to prepare for power, for the president to be, but especially for the communities that the prime leaders will come from.
In our situation, one can say that Gema communities and the Kalenjin have had the experience of producing a president, i.e. the power of ruling a nation, hence require little remedial training. What they require is the assurance and acceptance in the national common upon relinquishing that power.
Perils of Losing Power: Our history
The experiences of the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin peoples upon 'losing' power have been of pain and rejection. The first Kikuyu president died in office, without having prepared his community for the end. Then President Moi and his Kalenjin elite fought hard to ruin their economic power.
Sackings from public office, witch-hunts, public humiliations and stereotyping pushed the grieving Kikuyu into a hard shell of suspicion and angst. They were a community of 'children bereft', who longed for the days of privilege. That is why they fought so hard to dislodge Moi from power - using all means, local as well as foreign-instigated. And when they regained power, they acted as ruthlessly as is permissible by their collective conscience.
When the Kalenjin gained power unexpectedly following the demise of Mzee Kenyatta, on the other hand, they made it a tribal celebration. Upon Kenya was foisted the most incompetent and egregious regime of kleptomania and illiterate arrogance. A rapacious breed of people whose badge of honour was a warlike mentality and huge doses of low self-esteem filled the public sphere, causing the nation untold harm.
Their primal conservatism saved this nation a lot of pain, though. One shudders to think what would have happened had such thin-skinnedness boiled in the cauldron of wicked adventurism. Kenya would be a failed republic!
Then Moi left power, and the Kalenjin faced the wrath of the returning Kikuyu - sackings all around, replacements in all major positions of public privilege and horrendous chasticement. The Old Warrior clans clammed up into a shell of anger unknown. Just a piece of it was shown when they thought they had "got" the Kikuyu at their weakest, in 2008.
These two cases help me to sufficiently illustrate why it is important to prepare for power - both to exercise and to bequeath it. Such preparation, now, is especially important for the people of Luo Nyanza and Western, who are at their closest possible leap to power.
Luo/Kikuyu Rivalry
One other vital reason is the traditional rivalry that has been created, both by the Kikuyu and Kalenjin, against the Luo. How will the Luo people relate to the common Kikuyu, when the former obtain the reins of state?
Even though our new Constitution has restructured our government and sufficiently emasculated the Presidency, so that the President is not the omnipotent Collosus that he has been in this land, the institution of the Presidency (including the powerful position of Deputy President) is still an overwhelming estate. It is such as to earn any county or community with which it is temporarily associated extreme pride and unfathomable prestige.
Which is why we should not be casual and simplistic, using cheap excuses and unverified legalisms to take for granted the benevolence of any of our next ruling communities. I will not buy the childish optimism of the 'one Kenya, one people' idealists. That is merely our hope; our intended destination, folks. It is certainly not our current position on the journey.
If the Luo/Luhya people are not actively prepared to be gracious and magnanimous in victory, then we face a tough fourth republic as a nation. It is especially important to direct the Lake Basin peoples to start thinking of themselves as leaders of a nation - both of themselves and of their former rulers. They should be helped to set aside extreme haughtiness and pomposity, highfalutin braggadocio and feelings of vengeance against their losing opponents. They should also divorce themselves of unreasonable expectations.
Producing the next President
This is the time to lead the Luo and Luhya, who are likeliest to produce our next President and Deputy President, to start thinking of themselves no longer as passengers in a bus or just clients at a restaurant, but as the drivers of the bus, or the staffers of the restaurant, whose main concern should be the safety, peace and satisfaction of their esteemed clients. The Luo and Luhya people must be made to understand the value of tolerance, community and charity.
It is our chance to seek a co-operative, collegiate society that accomodates those with who, for too long, we may not have seen eye to eye. It is time for the peoples of the Lake Pole to become 'bigger' souls, citizens who will more closely embrace their brethren from the Mountain Pole. Like a powerful magnet, let both polarities attain an indissoluble, mutually attractive and uniting force of national cohesion.
Opportunity to Serve the Nation - It's Work, not Play
They should be leaders in service and hospitality, in times of joy and of difficulty, and should above everything else, know that leading a nation is a responsibility, not an endless barbeque party. Over every other groupings, they will be watched and harshly judged for the defining errors of their own era in power. For history to be kind to all of us, the Luo and the Luhya should totally seek the pragmatic balance that only well-mentored rulers ever attain.
They must be prepared to share with others and accept those who may not look at issues from the same angle, or speak like them. They must be taught to be accomodative of criticism in their direction from those who ruled before them, and should be made to learn that they will one day leave the stage of power.
It is not good for a people to attend the banquet of state power with unwashed hands and untrimmed nails.
I am concerned that the polarising politics of the election year might not leave enough time to address these vital matters of community manners. Yet, it seems written in the stars that the Luo and Luhya will be leading Kenya, at least for the next decade.
What we witnessed in 2007 showed a people unprepared for the sacred duty of governing a nation of 43 different societies. Eventhough the Kalenjin muddled through for 24 years, the strict expectation that we have learned from their mistakes, and our own avid clamour for a better Kenya require that these two communities behave better and conduct their affairs in a much more dignified manner than their predecessors on the festival stage.
Better than our Predecessors!
This way, they will reclaim Kenya, not just for themselves, but for all the 41 remaining groups, whose turn might come too late to straighten a steadily bending tree. The mistakes of the Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki administrations should not be used against their people, but rather to set the minimal standards of good that the next leaders should attain.
There is a certain inevitability about it. this time around. Unlike in 2007, when President Mwai Kibaki still retained hope of returning for a second term, and his supporters and all the business interests reliant on his umbrage could afford some form of lackadaisical complacency, 2012 bears certainty of change. We will be electing a new President of Kenya, whatever the result. And, therefore, everyone is bated in their breathing. We do not appear to have any noticeable group of disinterested citizens. Some are feeling sure to win, others fear the uncertain weight of loss.
For this last group, their leaders too should prepare them to hand over power and accept the dynamics of time and fate. It is not their rights they are giving up, just the privilege of leading our shared, beloved nation to the able and steady hands of their loving compatriots. They should be assured of prosperity and peace in the next chapter of this verse.
I thank you, and do sincerely hope you too are preparing to lead exemplarily in this next dispensation.
.
Power without Preparation
But there is no greater corrupter than power attained without preparation. Most people go into politics with the very best intentions. In fact, the majority of leaders are amazingly superb souls: better humans than most would anticipate, upon first hearing the bleak histories of their failings and weaknesses. Yet, in all circumstances, the corruption and odium that reflects their tenures and blights their age is embodied in the exertions and over-zealous actions of their supporters.
It should not come as a surprise that most traditions insist on moulding and mentoring future power-wielders. Monarchies and organisations, homes and businesses are known to identify future leaders and to train them for the wise performance of their expected social authorities and responsibilities.
Apprenticeeship
Understudies and apprentices learn over time and become so good that at the onset of their appointed time, everything flows seamlessly. This important preparation is almost a lifelong calling. For example, if Queen Elizabeth II - of the United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland - if she were to leave her majestic and powerful offices for any given reason, few expect to feel a blip of the scales of state, because her heir apparent, Prince Charles, is so thoroughly prepared to be King that his talents are awasting...
When I say few, I especially refer to her subjects, both loyal and disloyal, as well as the rest of the global public. And that is my foremost intention. The world would remain stable as is, if Charles became King today, because we are long mentally prepared for the circumstance.
Power in new hands
To return to Kenya, it is fated that there will be a new president, yet none of the 'probable presidents' has prepared his or her people for power. There is absolute need to prepare for power, for the president to be, but especially for the communities that the prime leaders will come from.
In our situation, one can say that Gema communities and the Kalenjin have had the experience of producing a president, i.e. the power of ruling a nation, hence require little remedial training. What they require is the assurance and acceptance in the national common upon relinquishing that power.
Perils of Losing Power: Our history
The experiences of the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin peoples upon 'losing' power have been of pain and rejection. The first Kikuyu president died in office, without having prepared his community for the end. Then President Moi and his Kalenjin elite fought hard to ruin their economic power.
Sackings from public office, witch-hunts, public humiliations and stereotyping pushed the grieving Kikuyu into a hard shell of suspicion and angst. They were a community of 'children bereft', who longed for the days of privilege. That is why they fought so hard to dislodge Moi from power - using all means, local as well as foreign-instigated. And when they regained power, they acted as ruthlessly as is permissible by their collective conscience.
When the Kalenjin gained power unexpectedly following the demise of Mzee Kenyatta, on the other hand, they made it a tribal celebration. Upon Kenya was foisted the most incompetent and egregious regime of kleptomania and illiterate arrogance. A rapacious breed of people whose badge of honour was a warlike mentality and huge doses of low self-esteem filled the public sphere, causing the nation untold harm.
Their primal conservatism saved this nation a lot of pain, though. One shudders to think what would have happened had such thin-skinnedness boiled in the cauldron of wicked adventurism. Kenya would be a failed republic!
Then Moi left power, and the Kalenjin faced the wrath of the returning Kikuyu - sackings all around, replacements in all major positions of public privilege and horrendous chasticement. The Old Warrior clans clammed up into a shell of anger unknown. Just a piece of it was shown when they thought they had "got" the Kikuyu at their weakest, in 2008.
These two cases help me to sufficiently illustrate why it is important to prepare for power - both to exercise and to bequeath it. Such preparation, now, is especially important for the people of Luo Nyanza and Western, who are at their closest possible leap to power.
Luo/Kikuyu Rivalry
One other vital reason is the traditional rivalry that has been created, both by the Kikuyu and Kalenjin, against the Luo. How will the Luo people relate to the common Kikuyu, when the former obtain the reins of state?
Even though our new Constitution has restructured our government and sufficiently emasculated the Presidency, so that the President is not the omnipotent Collosus that he has been in this land, the institution of the Presidency (including the powerful position of Deputy President) is still an overwhelming estate. It is such as to earn any county or community with which it is temporarily associated extreme pride and unfathomable prestige.
Which is why we should not be casual and simplistic, using cheap excuses and unverified legalisms to take for granted the benevolence of any of our next ruling communities. I will not buy the childish optimism of the 'one Kenya, one people' idealists. That is merely our hope; our intended destination, folks. It is certainly not our current position on the journey.
If the Luo/Luhya people are not actively prepared to be gracious and magnanimous in victory, then we face a tough fourth republic as a nation. It is especially important to direct the Lake Basin peoples to start thinking of themselves as leaders of a nation - both of themselves and of their former rulers. They should be helped to set aside extreme haughtiness and pomposity, highfalutin braggadocio and feelings of vengeance against their losing opponents. They should also divorce themselves of unreasonable expectations.
Producing the next President
This is the time to lead the Luo and Luhya, who are likeliest to produce our next President and Deputy President, to start thinking of themselves no longer as passengers in a bus or just clients at a restaurant, but as the drivers of the bus, or the staffers of the restaurant, whose main concern should be the safety, peace and satisfaction of their esteemed clients. The Luo and Luhya people must be made to understand the value of tolerance, community and charity.
It is our chance to seek a co-operative, collegiate society that accomodates those with who, for too long, we may not have seen eye to eye. It is time for the peoples of the Lake Pole to become 'bigger' souls, citizens who will more closely embrace their brethren from the Mountain Pole. Like a powerful magnet, let both polarities attain an indissoluble, mutually attractive and uniting force of national cohesion.
Opportunity to Serve the Nation - It's Work, not Play
They should be leaders in service and hospitality, in times of joy and of difficulty, and should above everything else, know that leading a nation is a responsibility, not an endless barbeque party. Over every other groupings, they will be watched and harshly judged for the defining errors of their own era in power. For history to be kind to all of us, the Luo and the Luhya should totally seek the pragmatic balance that only well-mentored rulers ever attain.
They must be prepared to share with others and accept those who may not look at issues from the same angle, or speak like them. They must be taught to be accomodative of criticism in their direction from those who ruled before them, and should be made to learn that they will one day leave the stage of power.
It is not good for a people to attend the banquet of state power with unwashed hands and untrimmed nails.
I am concerned that the polarising politics of the election year might not leave enough time to address these vital matters of community manners. Yet, it seems written in the stars that the Luo and Luhya will be leading Kenya, at least for the next decade.
What we witnessed in 2007 showed a people unprepared for the sacred duty of governing a nation of 43 different societies. Eventhough the Kalenjin muddled through for 24 years, the strict expectation that we have learned from their mistakes, and our own avid clamour for a better Kenya require that these two communities behave better and conduct their affairs in a much more dignified manner than their predecessors on the festival stage.
Better than our Predecessors!
This way, they will reclaim Kenya, not just for themselves, but for all the 41 remaining groups, whose turn might come too late to straighten a steadily bending tree. The mistakes of the Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki administrations should not be used against their people, but rather to set the minimal standards of good that the next leaders should attain.
There is a certain inevitability about it. this time around. Unlike in 2007, when President Mwai Kibaki still retained hope of returning for a second term, and his supporters and all the business interests reliant on his umbrage could afford some form of lackadaisical complacency, 2012 bears certainty of change. We will be electing a new President of Kenya, whatever the result. And, therefore, everyone is bated in their breathing. We do not appear to have any noticeable group of disinterested citizens. Some are feeling sure to win, others fear the uncertain weight of loss.
For this last group, their leaders too should prepare them to hand over power and accept the dynamics of time and fate. It is not their rights they are giving up, just the privilege of leading our shared, beloved nation to the able and steady hands of their loving compatriots. They should be assured of prosperity and peace in the next chapter of this verse.
I thank you, and do sincerely hope you too are preparing to lead exemplarily in this next dispensation.
.
Monday, May 16, 2011
An Ode to Wanjiru
Gone too soon, and that we rue
A brighter star we'll wait to see;
our nation's pride, Sam Wanjiru,
reaped from the sky's starry sea.
Happy, you made us; sad now sore,
Mad, failed we to see your true right
amid the accolades and wins more;
tumultuous us, you burning bright.
Now gone, journeyed single way,
Now mourn all friends and foes
of runs long and jaunts short, say
respect and regrets throats force.
A man so rare, a name unique..
to speak, foot after foot, long pace
Bronze, Silver, no Gold to pick;
in cities and roads famed for race.
Toothy smile, sweaty face, nighted!
Where just this morning, peaceful
and full of hope, gilt medal lighted
the slopes of a town alive, blissful.
Nyahururu, where comes another?
Wanjiru, what replaces a true guru?
Dare we speak in pain for bother,
or silently mourn a beacon of Uhuru?
Beijing in Zero Eight, in full rapture
a world held atrance by Marathon.
The gods of Olympus did capture
a glimpse of one fit them to dethrone.
And their ire stoked, didn't subside
plotting with Minerva, to jot demise.
Woman beguiled, money lots beside
This day, against you, we surmise.
Jealousy, greed, desire, inhumanity!
False friendships, faked dalliances;
Now consigned to cavernous vanity,
Head first, proving Death's valiance!
Then again, you always came first,
beating and winning, your prowess;
Should we bewail your utter thirst
to vanquish Death? No, we confess.
Rest in Peace, ChampionWanjiru.
A brighter star we'll wait to see;
our nation's pride, Sam Wanjiru,
reaped from the sky's starry sea.
Happy, you made us; sad now sore,
Mad, failed we to see your true right
amid the accolades and wins more;
tumultuous us, you burning bright.
Now gone, journeyed single way,
Now mourn all friends and foes
of runs long and jaunts short, say
respect and regrets throats force.
A man so rare, a name unique..
to speak, foot after foot, long pace
Bronze, Silver, no Gold to pick;
in cities and roads famed for race.
Toothy smile, sweaty face, nighted!
Where just this morning, peaceful
and full of hope, gilt medal lighted
the slopes of a town alive, blissful.
Nyahururu, where comes another?
Wanjiru, what replaces a true guru?
Dare we speak in pain for bother,
or silently mourn a beacon of Uhuru?
Beijing in Zero Eight, in full rapture
a world held atrance by Marathon.
The gods of Olympus did capture
a glimpse of one fit them to dethrone.
And their ire stoked, didn't subside
plotting with Minerva, to jot demise.
Woman beguiled, money lots beside
This day, against you, we surmise.
Jealousy, greed, desire, inhumanity!
False friendships, faked dalliances;
Now consigned to cavernous vanity,
Head first, proving Death's valiance!
Then again, you always came first,
beating and winning, your prowess;
Should we bewail your utter thirst
to vanquish Death? No, we confess.
Rest in Peace, ChampionWanjiru.
Friday, January 21, 2011
How many people may a police officer shoot and kill legally?
Human life is precious. I strive with honest desire to discover, and greatly struggle against the strong subjectivity of my circumstance as a human, yet find nothing more sacrosanct than the vital force in a person. This, to me, therefore, is a self-evident truth: that the life of any and every person is worth more than everything and anything else.
I have personal reasons for respecting human life, above being well aware of the inherent evil of human minds, but will not recount them here. I will, instead, lean standing at the foyer of Law, on the Pillar of our national Constitution. The lofty preamble, in the mould of that immortal American bequest to democracy, starts us off with this promise:
We the People of Kenya …
COMMITTED to nurturing and protecting the well-being of the
individual, the family, communities and the nation:…
as evidence to the value of the individual to the nation.
My guiding law, at Article 3
[(1) Every person has an obligation to respect, uphold and defend this Constitution],
enjoins us all to regard the national values and principles espoused in it, and set out at Article 10. Here, human dignity is not included in error. Neither is the emphasis on the rule of law, nor accountability. These are all key values of my nation.
That being so, from where does our persistent impunity and extra-judiciality originate?
I will not excuse, or be accused of defending crime in any hue. And that is exactly the point! Crime is not codifiable into private or public categories. Crime by a wanted brigand, or a wanton state brigade is crime. I will not fork out my taxes, to be protected by a police ‘force’ of whimpering sissies; nor will I foot the bill for a ‘service’ of marauding, blood-thirsty and trigger-jacking hounds. Neither is contemplated in law or fact.
I, nay, we the people expect to be served by professional, humane and law-regarding police officers.
Murder is a crime recognized in all law, and especially without resistance, cannot be used as a defense against another crime. Listen to this:
Article 26 (1) Every person has the right to life.
Short and precise: every person, including the common criminal. There must be a part of that sentence that the superintendents at Vigilance House do not recognize, and it is spelled E-V-E-R-Y.
Article 27 appears as an oasis of life in this desert of perversion.
(1) Every person is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law.
…
(4) The State shall not discriminate directly or indirectly against any person on any ground, including race, sex, pregnancy, marital status, health status, ethnic or social origin, colour, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, dress, language or birth.
Many will claim that criminals have no consciences; which is vapid nonsense. We will not be in good reason expecting the conscience of each individual to work in exactly the same way, with the same markers, beacons and light-houses to point right from wrong. Just as some eye-sights are colour-blind, failing to differentiate green from blue, some consciences are as naturally out of tune.
That must reasonably be recognized as a disability. At least a modern, civilized society should. And most do, creating judicial and correctional facilities to preserve and protect wider society from these vagaries wreaked by Nature herself. If science endeavours to correct failing eyesight, so evidently and avidly should science attempt to correct consciences.
Call it character management, behavior control, mind engineering, what not. Many organizations and groups do it. My church did it to me, before I realized and took leave of absence. Further about consciences, it is the moral duty of every social grouping to protect the individual within it from being rendered soulless and totally taken over by the addictive routine of the rituals and performances of their jobs.
When Pavlov (Ivan, and his protégé, Ivan Filippovitch Tolochinov, 1901) confirmed conditioned reflex action by experimenting amongst dogs, he was testing the power of mind over the functioning of the body. Have we trained and raised our police organs to such callous and murderous conditioning, that the only way – they know – of reacting to crime is to cock-aim-and-twitch-the-index-finger? If we have, then it becomes our task as society to shed the habit, unlearn the condition, learn fresh approaches, and relearn our compassionate instinctive nature.
The Kenya Police Service owes a duty to its officers to protect them from running amok, armed amongst millions, maiming and ruthlessly lining up a morose, mournful trail. It is an urgent good: that the people trusted with the protection of society, and the maintenance of its law and order, must in turn be protected, for their own good – in the mind.
Otherwise, we sow some sort of Pavlovian anchoring, a gluttonous, Tekayo-esque[1] appetite for human blood, and reap the whirlwind – a Lamarckian[2] adaptation to murder.
We have thus far, ended up with criminal investigators and intended crime busters who no longer bother to exercise their minds. They are tired of being ‘played around with, ever running on recurrent fools errands.’
When witnesses to crime, or even while contemplating its possibility, they act – rather, react – reflexively. They are run as hostages by sudden resurgences of desires and sharpened, animalistic reactions to crime scenes, and will kill without choice or will.
Someone mentioned the late king of Nairobi shots – a Mr. Patrick Shaw, infamous for performing final rites amongst the pot-shot clans. He met his end the same way, to confirm the adage. Still, Shaw was a man hardened by the weight of his time: policing a city in the aftermath of an attempted coup. Men had died of the gun, and many soldiers had been loosed on society, relieved of their honourable duty, due to indiscipline. They knew how to use guns, and were out of the regimented sequestration of the barracks without much hope or welcome.
They were roaming the streets with angst and disillusionment, victims of the State’s indifference, and willing to pay back in kind to a society that bailed from their side at the smell of trouble. They needed a force to control them, and due to a failed Police policy, Shaw had to run the show. He did his bit, standing up to a rabid army only as one man can, until the inevitable happened. But Kenya today is not Shaw’s Kenya.
We have reached a point of national maturity and identity. We have something in us that we sorely lacked in 1985. Yet the Police of today do not seem to adapt to this national maturity and recognition of change. They want to be Patrick ‘Show’, instead of serving their country, like did Mr. Shaw. Shaw acted to protect the society from a rogue military element. Show me who will protect us from ‘a service’ that discriminates on the basis of conscience, against our sacred Constitution.
I would like someone to answer this: How many people may a police officer kill, before he is psychologically declared disabled of conscience, unable to deliver the public good, and therefore unfit to hold a gun? One. Three. Five?
Determining this number is the solution to extra-judicial shootings in Kenya. The number will act as a touchstone, a defence post beyond which officers will not venture. It will be a second deterrence, beyond normal human feeling, and will definitely save lives. The number will advise action, control choices and recall to sense any officer in a moment requiring use of gun-force. Hit this tally and retire. Or simply, serve without killing people.
Self-defence as an excuse has been adulterated. In my opinion, if a single officer can shoot three armed, ‘dangerous’ criminals in a single ‘fight’, then the danger is imaginary.
A man, a criminal man, any man will give their all to live. That three men are routinely downed by one officer in an instant is a measure of skewed aggression. That ten police officers maroon a thug and pound him to steaming pulp, is still a measure of misplaced choices. Either the others were not armed, or they were not interested in the shootout. But most probably, the police just wanted to ‘finish off the job.’
How else, would we explain their daily ‘dangerous criminal’ tag? How dangerous, if always ending up stiff on the mortuary slab?
Main and disarm, arrest then charge!
Or is it because there are never any facts to prove a crime in court?
[1] Grace Ogot, 2001: Land Without Thunder, East African Educational Publishers, Nairobi.
[2] Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: ‘Soft Inheritance’ - works and heritage, online materials about Lamarck (23.000 files of Lamarck's herbarium, 11.000 manuscripts, books, etc.) edited online by Pietro Corsi (Oxford University) and released by CRHST-CNRS in France.
I have personal reasons for respecting human life, above being well aware of the inherent evil of human minds, but will not recount them here. I will, instead, lean standing at the foyer of Law, on the Pillar of our national Constitution. The lofty preamble, in the mould of that immortal American bequest to democracy, starts us off with this promise:
We the People of Kenya …
COMMITTED to nurturing and protecting the well-being of the
individual, the family, communities and the nation:…
as evidence to the value of the individual to the nation.
My guiding law, at Article 3
[(1) Every person has an obligation to respect, uphold and defend this Constitution],
enjoins us all to regard the national values and principles espoused in it, and set out at Article 10. Here, human dignity is not included in error. Neither is the emphasis on the rule of law, nor accountability. These are all key values of my nation.
That being so, from where does our persistent impunity and extra-judiciality originate?
I will not excuse, or be accused of defending crime in any hue. And that is exactly the point! Crime is not codifiable into private or public categories. Crime by a wanted brigand, or a wanton state brigade is crime. I will not fork out my taxes, to be protected by a police ‘force’ of whimpering sissies; nor will I foot the bill for a ‘service’ of marauding, blood-thirsty and trigger-jacking hounds. Neither is contemplated in law or fact.
I, nay, we the people expect to be served by professional, humane and law-regarding police officers.
Murder is a crime recognized in all law, and especially without resistance, cannot be used as a defense against another crime. Listen to this:
Article 26 (1) Every person has the right to life.
Short and precise: every person, including the common criminal. There must be a part of that sentence that the superintendents at Vigilance House do not recognize, and it is spelled E-V-E-R-Y.
Article 27 appears as an oasis of life in this desert of perversion.
(1) Every person is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law.
…
(4) The State shall not discriminate directly or indirectly against any person on any ground, including race, sex, pregnancy, marital status, health status, ethnic or social origin, colour, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, dress, language or birth.
Many will claim that criminals have no consciences; which is vapid nonsense. We will not be in good reason expecting the conscience of each individual to work in exactly the same way, with the same markers, beacons and light-houses to point right from wrong. Just as some eye-sights are colour-blind, failing to differentiate green from blue, some consciences are as naturally out of tune.
That must reasonably be recognized as a disability. At least a modern, civilized society should. And most do, creating judicial and correctional facilities to preserve and protect wider society from these vagaries wreaked by Nature herself. If science endeavours to correct failing eyesight, so evidently and avidly should science attempt to correct consciences.
Call it character management, behavior control, mind engineering, what not. Many organizations and groups do it. My church did it to me, before I realized and took leave of absence. Further about consciences, it is the moral duty of every social grouping to protect the individual within it from being rendered soulless and totally taken over by the addictive routine of the rituals and performances of their jobs.
When Pavlov (Ivan, and his protégé, Ivan Filippovitch Tolochinov, 1901) confirmed conditioned reflex action by experimenting amongst dogs, he was testing the power of mind over the functioning of the body. Have we trained and raised our police organs to such callous and murderous conditioning, that the only way – they know – of reacting to crime is to cock-aim-and-twitch-the-index-finger? If we have, then it becomes our task as society to shed the habit, unlearn the condition, learn fresh approaches, and relearn our compassionate instinctive nature.
The Kenya Police Service owes a duty to its officers to protect them from running amok, armed amongst millions, maiming and ruthlessly lining up a morose, mournful trail. It is an urgent good: that the people trusted with the protection of society, and the maintenance of its law and order, must in turn be protected, for their own good – in the mind.
Otherwise, we sow some sort of Pavlovian anchoring, a gluttonous, Tekayo-esque[1] appetite for human blood, and reap the whirlwind – a Lamarckian[2] adaptation to murder.
We have thus far, ended up with criminal investigators and intended crime busters who no longer bother to exercise their minds. They are tired of being ‘played around with, ever running on recurrent fools errands.’
When witnesses to crime, or even while contemplating its possibility, they act – rather, react – reflexively. They are run as hostages by sudden resurgences of desires and sharpened, animalistic reactions to crime scenes, and will kill without choice or will.
Someone mentioned the late king of Nairobi shots – a Mr. Patrick Shaw, infamous for performing final rites amongst the pot-shot clans. He met his end the same way, to confirm the adage. Still, Shaw was a man hardened by the weight of his time: policing a city in the aftermath of an attempted coup. Men had died of the gun, and many soldiers had been loosed on society, relieved of their honourable duty, due to indiscipline. They knew how to use guns, and were out of the regimented sequestration of the barracks without much hope or welcome.
They were roaming the streets with angst and disillusionment, victims of the State’s indifference, and willing to pay back in kind to a society that bailed from their side at the smell of trouble. They needed a force to control them, and due to a failed Police policy, Shaw had to run the show. He did his bit, standing up to a rabid army only as one man can, until the inevitable happened. But Kenya today is not Shaw’s Kenya.
We have reached a point of national maturity and identity. We have something in us that we sorely lacked in 1985. Yet the Police of today do not seem to adapt to this national maturity and recognition of change. They want to be Patrick ‘Show’, instead of serving their country, like did Mr. Shaw. Shaw acted to protect the society from a rogue military element. Show me who will protect us from ‘a service’ that discriminates on the basis of conscience, against our sacred Constitution.
I would like someone to answer this: How many people may a police officer kill, before he is psychologically declared disabled of conscience, unable to deliver the public good, and therefore unfit to hold a gun? One. Three. Five?
Determining this number is the solution to extra-judicial shootings in Kenya. The number will act as a touchstone, a defence post beyond which officers will not venture. It will be a second deterrence, beyond normal human feeling, and will definitely save lives. The number will advise action, control choices and recall to sense any officer in a moment requiring use of gun-force. Hit this tally and retire. Or simply, serve without killing people.
Self-defence as an excuse has been adulterated. In my opinion, if a single officer can shoot three armed, ‘dangerous’ criminals in a single ‘fight’, then the danger is imaginary.
A man, a criminal man, any man will give their all to live. That three men are routinely downed by one officer in an instant is a measure of skewed aggression. That ten police officers maroon a thug and pound him to steaming pulp, is still a measure of misplaced choices. Either the others were not armed, or they were not interested in the shootout. But most probably, the police just wanted to ‘finish off the job.’
How else, would we explain their daily ‘dangerous criminal’ tag? How dangerous, if always ending up stiff on the mortuary slab?
Main and disarm, arrest then charge!
Or is it because there are never any facts to prove a crime in court?
 |
| Callous: "Lie dowb well, so that we may finish you off!" |
 |
| Scavenging: "Loitering with intent to cause a breach of the peace..." |
[1] Grace Ogot, 2001: Land Without Thunder, East African Educational Publishers, Nairobi.
[2] Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: ‘Soft Inheritance’ - works and heritage, online materials about Lamarck (23.000 files of Lamarck's herbarium, 11.000 manuscripts, books, etc.) edited online by Pietro Corsi (Oxford University) and released by CRHST-CNRS in France.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)