Elderkin Is The Queen Of Black Propaganda

Monday, 30 May 2011 00:05 BY MUTHUI KARIUKI

You don’t have to like her. But you have absolutely no choice but to hail Sarah Elderkin’s unparalleled gift in the dark art of propaganda.  Her recent piece in The Star, “Kalonzo Far From the Saint Portrayed”, is yet another nugget in her rather long anthology of pure and poetic palaver. In fact, by the time I was done reading it, I was more awed by Elderkin’s prowess at kneading words into an emotive narrative that can compete with creative writing worthy of an award on the international literary contests circuit.  
Sarah is one of Kenya’s most experienced journalists and indeed among the finest of the lot. Hers is the enduring image of a relic of a nostalgic past where hierarchically, mzungu fashioned him or herself to be deified. That’s how come she holds herself like some sort of a prankster-goddess of media for a specific political axis that thrives, nay is fatally hooked to, rarefied but malodorous propaganda.   
A keen devotee of Kenya’s olden day political renegade agenda, Elderkin was the power beneath the wings of Hilary Ng’weno’s authoritative but now defunct news analysis weekly journal, The Weekly Review.  She was a key Raila camp communications advisor of the 2007 gone-foul presidential election and most likely behind advisories that led to acidic verbal attacks on ODM’s main competitor back in the day. It may seem Elderkin got stuck in the murk of 2007 never to relent even as the world marched on.
Lest you forget, Elderkin is one of Kenya’s few journalists with a long and rich memory of our country’s socio-political evolution. Unlike her less creative peers, Elderkin deploys finer details in her elephantine memory whenever required to extinguish any competition aimed at anyone or anything she considers to bear the slightest mark of her political camp’s nemesis.  
Armed with such vast knowledge and exposure of the makings of modern Kenya, over and above her acidic cynicism, Elderkin takes on just about anyone in the league of her cluster of ‘others’, including President Kibaki, Professor Makau Mutua, DPM Uhuru Kenyatta, but particularly so VP Kalonzo Musyoka. It may seem that of the political lot targeted for Elderkin’s sharp pen, Kalonzo is the enemy Number One. If it is not for the inherent threat he is to Elderkin’s benefactor, I wonder what else could arouse such extreme passions against a seemingly harmless fellow from some far-flung haunt in the depths of Ukambani. But that’s another matter altogether.  
Aside from facts, Elderkin’s artistry in the manufacture of poetic propaganda manifests most readily in three unequalled techniques that she employs with much ingenuity in her writing.
One, hyperbole. If there ever was someone who can inflate an ant hill into an Everest without breaking a sweat, then that person is Sarah Elderkin when it comes to reframing facts and personalities.  In her remarkably long story-telling career, she has found it most exciting to squeeze a gigantic effigy of particular personages while in her very political backyard she has perfected the art of concealing ugly beasts with admirable skill. Woe unto you if you ever find yourself in Elderkin’s opposing camp — you will be on one of the sharpest receiving ends! It is at such times when Elderkin would elevate disdainful and sometimes outright vile caricatures meant to degrade others as indeed cited in her recent piece on Kalonzo.
Two, redundancy. In the last 20 years, the story of Kalonzo and the land saga has been published three times — all of them by Elderkin. Perhaps the story’s very political barrenness forces her to regurgitate it time and again, hoping it would one day stir the political scene to the disadvantage of Kalonzo. But she has failed miserably, and it shows. A whole generation of young Kenyans (this writer included) has come of age over the past two decades to find Sarah going on and on like what they used to call a broken record when some of us were mere young adults.  
Sarah’s sheer obsession with Kalonzo-and-the-land-case is embarrassingly like her Britons’ endless retailing of the story of how they won the football World Cup back in 1966. They will still be telling it in 2066! What’s the problem? Can’t she muck-rake any new dirt on Kalonzo? It’s trite, tiresome and positively morbid the way she carries on about this non-issue and non-subject. And, pray, what would happen if the lady should somehow, against all odds, come up with brand new dirt on the VP — we would no doubt be regaled with the same until 2030 and beyond!

Three, literary animadversion. Sarah’s critical and censorious remarks are designed to disarm and then kill. She opens her piece by denying truthfulness to writer Philip Ndolo and arrogating it to herself. This tactic used to awe village idiots in that long ago time when the mzungu Memsahib and Bwana were they law of the land in this country. It will no longer do. Today, Kenyans have a very keen sense of what it is that they are being sold at any one time by anyone, and not even a deeply and sternly frowning, finger-wagging latter-day Memsahib can intimidate them into not closely examining her wares.
By denigrating Kalonzo across 20 years, Sarah is trying to sell us another political brand — Prime Minister Raila Odinga. She is the ultimate snake oil sales-woman; that is why she begins with ascribing lying and lack of research to the other fellow. But what a waste of sheer effort, for no one who admires Brand Kalonzo can possibly be sold on Brand Raila. Not in this life. And the amazing thing is that the reverse is not true. I rest my case.  


Muthui Kariuki is the Communications Advisor in the Vice President’s Office