By MACHARIA GAITHO (email the author)
Posted Monday, February 21 2011 at 19:35
Posted Monday, February 21 2011 at 19:35
One of my enduring memories of President Jomo Kenyatta was the earthy and undoubtedly risqué language he often employed at public gatherings.
I was still at a very tender age when I first heard Mzee make references to anatomical parts of a woman in a style that cannot be repeated in a family newspaper.
The Old Man was full of the “your mother’s (expletive deleted)” insults when provoked to anger, and on such occasions hearing him address the nation from Uhuru Park during national day celebrations was a fascinating experience.
It became accepted that Mzee, the revered founding father of the nation, enjoyed certain immunities and privileges that allowed him to get away censure-free with such colourful language.
No Kenyan politician of note since has ever tried to replicate that inimitable style, not even President Kibaki and his pumbavu and mavi ya yuku.
But it now appears that Mzee has a worthy successor in his son, Uhuru.
Many of Mzee’s choice barbs were reserved for his fiercest political foe of the day, his former vice-president turned opposition doyen Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.
Therefore, it is interesting that as Uhuru Kenyatta practices the speech patterns learnt at daddy’s knee, his missiles are aimed at none other than Mr Raila Odinga, son and political heir of Jaramogi.
Mr Odinga is not taking it lying down, and from Mombasa over the weekend dished out as much dirt as he could to the younger Kenyatta and his political ally, William Ruto.
If the Jomo-Jaramogi wars of the 1960s were initially based on ideological grounds before turning crudely ethnic, the Raila-Uhuru sequel seems to be grounded in nothing but bad manners.
True, the two have emerged as the key contenders and rivals in the race to succeed President Kibaki come 2012, but one would expect that they represent generations that can differ in civilised and polite fashion.
The crude personalised attacks both are displaying illustrate the depths to which Kenyan politics has sunk. Prime Minister Odinga and Deputy Prime Minister Kenyatta are demonstrating that they are truly the sons of their fathers.
They are privileged scions of the political and mercantile elite who got the best education money could buy and the richest heirlooms that could come out of public service, but when cornered, they abandon all pretence at cosmopolitan sheen and retreat to atavistic and crude ethnic demagoguery.
The saddest thing is that it might not just be a fight between two spoilt and overgrown brats, but a much wider one that carries their respective communities along.
The ordinary Luo or Kikuyu stands to gain absolutely nothing by hoisting Mr Odinga or Mr Kenyatta to reach the fruit. That fruit will not be shared, but kept within the family, as amply demonstrated by Kenyatta and Odinga Mark 1.
Yet you can bet that when it comes to reactions to the current Odinga-Kenyatta brickbats, it is the ordinary and downtrodden Kikuyu and Luo who will be incited to come out most rabidly in support of their man.
******
The Arab world is ablaze. Peoples’ revolutions have swept like wildfire, and fixtures previously presumed unshakeable such as Hosni Mubarak of Egypt have been forced into abject capitulation.
It started with Tunisia, went to Egypt, then jumped across to threaten the oil-rich Gulf state of Bahrain (the owners of our Gregory Konchellah’s World Athletics Championship double-golds), where the fall of the monarchy might trigger a domino effect across the wealthy western-leaning feudal kingdoms from the tiny Emirates to Saudi Arabia.
Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, and even the stern Islamic Republican of Iran are all quaking at the rise of people power, but none more so than the Libyan Jamahiriya of the grand revolutionary himself, Muammar al Gaddafi.
The revolutionary-in-chief being consumed by the revolution has a poetic tinge to it, as have people’s republics being overthrown by the people.
But there is something missing in the great puzzle. It would be naïve to assume we’re witnessing the birth of a people-led democracy in the Arab world.
Conspicuously silent in all this are the voices of extremist Islam. One hopes vacuums are not being created to be filled by violent religious dictatorships.
mgaitho@ke.nationmedia.com
I was still at a very tender age when I first heard Mzee make references to anatomical parts of a woman in a style that cannot be repeated in a family newspaper.
The Old Man was full of the “your mother’s (expletive deleted)” insults when provoked to anger, and on such occasions hearing him address the nation from Uhuru Park during national day celebrations was a fascinating experience.
It became accepted that Mzee, the revered founding father of the nation, enjoyed certain immunities and privileges that allowed him to get away censure-free with such colourful language.
No Kenyan politician of note since has ever tried to replicate that inimitable style, not even President Kibaki and his pumbavu and mavi ya yuku.
But it now appears that Mzee has a worthy successor in his son, Uhuru.
Many of Mzee’s choice barbs were reserved for his fiercest political foe of the day, his former vice-president turned opposition doyen Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.
Therefore, it is interesting that as Uhuru Kenyatta practices the speech patterns learnt at daddy’s knee, his missiles are aimed at none other than Mr Raila Odinga, son and political heir of Jaramogi.
Mr Odinga is not taking it lying down, and from Mombasa over the weekend dished out as much dirt as he could to the younger Kenyatta and his political ally, William Ruto.
If the Jomo-Jaramogi wars of the 1960s were initially based on ideological grounds before turning crudely ethnic, the Raila-Uhuru sequel seems to be grounded in nothing but bad manners.
True, the two have emerged as the key contenders and rivals in the race to succeed President Kibaki come 2012, but one would expect that they represent generations that can differ in civilised and polite fashion.
The crude personalised attacks both are displaying illustrate the depths to which Kenyan politics has sunk. Prime Minister Odinga and Deputy Prime Minister Kenyatta are demonstrating that they are truly the sons of their fathers.
They are privileged scions of the political and mercantile elite who got the best education money could buy and the richest heirlooms that could come out of public service, but when cornered, they abandon all pretence at cosmopolitan sheen and retreat to atavistic and crude ethnic demagoguery.
The saddest thing is that it might not just be a fight between two spoilt and overgrown brats, but a much wider one that carries their respective communities along.
The ordinary Luo or Kikuyu stands to gain absolutely nothing by hoisting Mr Odinga or Mr Kenyatta to reach the fruit. That fruit will not be shared, but kept within the family, as amply demonstrated by Kenyatta and Odinga Mark 1.
Yet you can bet that when it comes to reactions to the current Odinga-Kenyatta brickbats, it is the ordinary and downtrodden Kikuyu and Luo who will be incited to come out most rabidly in support of their man.
******
The Arab world is ablaze. Peoples’ revolutions have swept like wildfire, and fixtures previously presumed unshakeable such as Hosni Mubarak of Egypt have been forced into abject capitulation.
It started with Tunisia, went to Egypt, then jumped across to threaten the oil-rich Gulf state of Bahrain (the owners of our Gregory Konchellah’s World Athletics Championship double-golds), where the fall of the monarchy might trigger a domino effect across the wealthy western-leaning feudal kingdoms from the tiny Emirates to Saudi Arabia.
Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, and even the stern Islamic Republican of Iran are all quaking at the rise of people power, but none more so than the Libyan Jamahiriya of the grand revolutionary himself, Muammar al Gaddafi.
The revolutionary-in-chief being consumed by the revolution has a poetic tinge to it, as have people’s republics being overthrown by the people.
But there is something missing in the great puzzle. It would be naïve to assume we’re witnessing the birth of a people-led democracy in the Arab world.
Conspicuously silent in all this are the voices of extremist Islam. One hopes vacuums are not being created to be filled by violent religious dictatorships.
mgaitho@ke.nationmedia.com
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