A question: why are all those Kenyans in Diaspora not chasing each other with pangas?
I’m being entirely serious. There are hundreds of thousands of Kenyans out there, in dozens of countries. They come from all tribes and all social classes. Some are very well educated, but many are not.
They are not necessarily in harmony. A casual look at internet chat forums and the ‘blogosphere’ would confirm this. Those guys out there are just as divided, just as resentful, just as ready to lash out as we seem to be back home. If anything, the anonymity of the internet seems to give Kenyan bloggers and surfers the confidence to spout all the tribalistic venom that they would not otherwise deploy in polite company.
So, Kenyans in Diaspora are divided, angry, crazed by perceived injustice; why aren’t they organising mobs in which to attack each other? You know the answer, and so do I. It has many different dimensions, and it is important to understand it if we are to save ourselves back home.
First, Kenyans out there have an economic stake that they want to protect. Going out and engaging in violent activity would quickly lose them their livelihoods and put them in a cell, if not a plane coming home. People with jobs, businesses, professions, and occupations have something to lose if they lose their heads. So they tend not to.
Second, they live in societies that, by and large, allow them to express their grievances constructively and seek institutional redress. I have watched footage of Kenyans (of all tribes) marching up to Kenya High Commission offices in London and Johannesburg and engaging in noisy (but peaceful) protest about the state of their home nation. They do what they have to, and they go home. No one is tear-gassed, clobbered or shot.
Third, more advanced societies have learned that you can’t hide the truth for too long. They don’t muzzle the media as soon as there is a bit of trouble; they don’t suppress independent thought; they don’t try to control who sees what. Here, our instinct is to clamp down on ideas, opinions and perspectives as soon as a problem emerges.
Fourth, more mature countries have learned that good institutions are the very bedrock of a successful society. They, too, have experienced stolen elections; they, too, have nefarious politicians; they, too, have corrupt people in high places. But they have robust, protected institutions that provide recourse and redress, and people believe in them.
I was a student at the London School of Economics (and so was one Emilio Mwai Kibaki, decades earlier), an institution renowned for a tradition of student protest. True to form, my fellows and I once marched onto London’s busy Waterloo bridge and engaged in a sit-down protest during rush hour, because we were offended by the Thatcher government’s refusal to disengage from apartheid South Africa. We brought that part of London to a near standstill. But no heavily armed coppers came to clobber us; we were allowed to do our thing for a reasonable period, and then we went back home (feeling, at least in my case, somewhat sheepish).
My point is that there is nothing wrong with peaceful protest. Things do go wrong in all societies, and have just gone horribly wrong in Kenya. It is perfectly OK for people to take exception and be allowed to demonstrate in protest (provided, critically, that they do not themselves harm anybody while doing so). Here, we persist with the gas ‘em, whack ‘em, shoot ‘em school of crowd control.
Our demonstrators, equally, need to learn the art of peaceful protest. There are many, many ways to make your point, and they do not involve starting fires, breaking into shops or molesting onlookers. That kind of behaviour is brainless and self-defeating and weakens the very cause you are fighting for. It concedes the moral high ground to the opponent.
There is a final reason why Kenyans abroad are not hacking and burning each other: they are not sitting on their ancestral lands. My wise friend Charles Onyango-Obbo wrote in Uganda’s Monitor newspaper recently: there is “a devil that lives on every plot of African land.” In Africa, your family could live on a piece of land legally for 200 years, but there will still be some “indigenous” people there who consider you to be “foreigners”. A cold resentment can be nurtured by the “locals” for generations.
If we want peace, we must have the building-blocks in place. A society that gives everyone a stake is one that can protect itself from itself. A society that builds and defends strong, independent and fair-minded institutions gives its people the confidence to believe in it. A society that allows people to articulate their anguish as well as their joy allows safe channels of expression. A society that has many dimensions to its economy and allows people to generate livelihoods from multiple sources prevents destructive and desperate battles for resources.
Kenya needs to be that society.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Sunny, peaceful protests cannot work in an evironment of hooliganism and vandalism. The reason why the police are opening tear gas is because some wananchi are throwing stones and vandalising property. I’m fully in support of peaceful, unhindered protests but I think our own people have displayed that they cannot demonstrate peacefully. I have been very tolerant upto this point but I cannot excuse burning homes, cars, and yanking rail tracks off the ground. Fighting with the mind requires a certain level of self-actualization and we are just not there yet.
Czed
There is truth in what you say. But do you genuinely believe the police have given peaceful protest even the slightest chance? They are reacting with an extremely heavy hand everywhere. It is quite possible to allow peaceful demonstrations BUT arrest transgressors immediately if things turn ugly. At the moment we are given no chance to know whether the intention was peaceful or not.
There is great danger in this. If you don’t allow anger to express itself openly and in a constructive manner, then it gets suppressed and bottled up. Worse still, it goes underground.
Some of the inexplicable violence we have seen is clearly the anger of decades ago that has re-emerged, stronger and uglier than ever.
Our leaders on both sides are playing a very dangerous zero sum game of Russian roulette. I have a very cynical view of the situation, both parties gain political mileage by the impasse. This is not nuclear physics; change the venue away from the CBD to address the issue of vandalism. If the police step in then, the government is exposed as being undemocratic and denying the basic right of freedom of association. Give them the rope to hang themselves. The selective the selective judgment and moral amnesia employed by the protagonists is very sad and annoying.
I used to rile against African pessimists and now find myself a card carrying member of the club.
Sunny you saw for yourself that over the weekend a group of peaceful demonstrators did away with a railway line that had existed since 1901. I don’t know what the devil around is but he must be very strong
But honestly; I think we give our leaders too much credit; there has to be some responsibility by Kenyans.
A woman being robbed as she alighted from a matatu; surely you cant blame that on a stolen election..?
There has got to be a better way to do this.
Why aren’t our MPs cutting themselves up with Machettes in parliament if they feel so strongly about their cause..?
Why didn’t ODM call their rally on Tuesday instead of going to parliament to guarantee their pensions for life…?
Did we not see the two sides conceding defeat or celebrate victory when the other side won or lost. When in doubt, they rose points of ORDER, which were deliberated amicably; even when some attempted to flout laid House procedures, they were firmly (but without violence) corrected through the said points of ORDER. They sat until 1.30 am , to ensure that all that needed discussion received the time it deserved. etc etc
The politicians – all sides – do not have our interests at heart. We cant wait for them to do something.
We have got to lead our leaders.
REFUSE TO BE USED TO PROPAGATE VIOLENCE !
Certainly, criminal behaviour couched as political protest should never be tolerated. But my point is different: that we have to find a safe channel of expression for genuinely disaffected people. It is not OK to beat or shoot them into submission. That is what brought us here in the first place – decades of repressed anger! This time, let all sides apply more intelligence and compassion to the problem.
But the signs of that happening are not good…
I have grown up on River Road and have worked there all my life,rather still do.
I have witnessed all sorts of riots especially the area where i operate from.Be it during the height of multipartism,hawkers,to name a few.All these were more violent during the presence of Riot police aka “ninjas” these days.
Then there was a span of time when the government allowed all sorts of protests,and i can tell you there was not a single incident of looting,vandalism.Why? there was not a single policeman in sight!!!
People are provoked by the mere presence of policemen.
Czed: “people” can certainly demonstrate pecaefully in kenya. The Green Belt Movement has shiown that in the past. It is the Young African Mshenzi Male that can’t demonstrate peacefully not Kenyans as such, if you allow me the distinction.
Secondly, police brutality and a lack of proper proportional response (as will be expected from every Western police, with exception for the UK, where police execute first, and ask questions later) are indeed plaguing the Kenyan Police. But that is due to atrocious working and living conditions of police officers first, and to totally insufficient equipment secondly.
The élite units (the GSU anti-riot squads) have modern equipment, full body armour – for which Lynne Muthoni Wanyeki recently mocked them as “mutant Ninja turtles” – and modern water cannons. The videos also demonstrate amply that these crack police troops – menacing as they look – are acting disciplined and restrained, have even helped wounded demonstrators. The real problem are under-trained and under-equipped simple AP constables, who only have greatcoats, steel helmets, and ridiculous small round shields. These, in fear of their lives, have resorted to revenge brutality and have fired more easily. They have fired with automatic rifles and FMJ bullets that can penetrate three slum shacks in a row and still kill two persons. Wrong, unsuited firearms and ammunition are the main reason for the casualties among innocents in Kisumu and n Nairobean slums. And it’s policians who must be blamed for that, not the poor police who can only use what they were (mis-)issued with.
Thirdly, as said befiore I have no that much problem if police open fire on armed attackers, though the chap in Kisumu did not have to die. But if you are participating in a mob that violently hurls stones at police and if you actively encourage such a mob and yourself taunt police and do a monkey dance, at least you shouldn’t wonder too much if a response flies your way.
The same is true for Kibera. If police were to gun down a blood-baying rabble that tries to destroy Kenya’s and Uganda’s transportation life line, my compassion will be very moderate. The real problem is the peaceful single mother in a tin shack 800 metres further away who was be killed by a police rifle bullet that went right through one of the hooligans, or was deflected from the soil.
Alexander