Take action on anybody inciting ethnic hatred
By PHILIP OCHIENG
Posted Saturday, July 14 2012 at 17:40
Posted Saturday, July 14 2012 at 17:40
Once upon a time we were among the world’s most promising Third World countries, not only in economic terms but also in terms of potential quality manpower.
How, then, do we explain the Kenyan tragedy? As the biblical prophet used to wonder, how have the mighty fallen?
I have lived in many countries throughout the planet. But I have never seen a country like Kenya – where the number of politicians with pinheads for brains is increasing at such a high speed.
What happened to Kenya? How is it that, nowadays, every day that the sun rises, senior politicians spew forth words that are increasingly embarrassing by their intellectual vacuity and moral stench?
Why can’t even a young university educated man — a presidential candidate into the bargain — drum up even the most elementary sense of logic?
In a country which is desperately pining for a political leadership that can save it from the precipice of an ethnic explosion — what sense of responsibility does a politician show when he attacks a government functionary for trying to bring to book anybody who may try to drive a wedge between our ethnic communities?
This week, Mzalendo Kibunjia — the man in charge of ensuring our ethnic cohesion — tried to seek redress from certain individuals, accusing them of using words in music that might create ethnic hatred and violence. Since the matter is in a court of law, the details of this particular case will not concern us here. We leave it to the judicial powers.
I am concerned only about the MPs – including a senior cabinet minister and potential president – who have pilloried Mr Kibunjia for taking that action.
Their problem seems to be that, by taking those youngsters to court, Mr Kibunjia is “targeting” only a certain ethnic group. If it pricks me more than it pricks you, there is a good reason.
For I have often been the target of such logical fatuity. There was a time – after the infamous MOU between Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga – when, every time I criticised the Kibaki government, I would receive e-mail from some Kikuyu readers accusing me of “Kikuyu bashing”. Logic had gone completely haywire!
For these individuals – even in a country with approaching 50 ethnic communities – Mr Kibaki was synonymous with Kikuyu.
The individuals probably had no idea that, with such bigoted kind of ownership of the President, they were alienating other Kenyans and making it very difficult for those Kenyans to regard Mr Kibaki with very tender hearts.
But the desire that Mr Kibunjia will discharge his duties without fear or favour is the reason Kenyans have invested so much hope in him.
Indeed, perception that he is not pursuing tribalists, racists, sexists, sectarians, religious bigots and other “hate speakers” with enough vigour is what has earned him the cane in recent days.
As soldiers and cultists know, music – because it is the most abstract of all the fine arts – is also the most apt to trigger the most irrational behaviour in an audience.
That is why we must act decisively against anybody who might be tempted to use the musical beat to induce us into a national war-dance of the kind that overtook us in 2008.
But it seems to some MPs – and even to an individual who might soon be our president – that Mr Kibunjia should implement his mandate selectively.
If the “suspect” is a Kikuyu, he must not be touched. I doubt whether the presidential candidate among them would have uttered a single word had the musicians been Giriama, Kisii, Somali or Teso.
And yet he wants to be their president! That is why we must condemn him in the strongest possible terms.
For our quest is for leaders who pursue with equal vigour everything everywhere in Kenya that undermines our rapid growth towards a single happy nation.
ochiengotani@gmail.com
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