Sometimes during dire times, a nation must rise above its leaders and respond to our moral imperative of being OUR BROTHERS’ KEEPERS. It’s the Summum Bonum, the greatest good, that a Great Nation can be called to serve. Like a Phoenix, Kenya rises from the ashes of ethnic differences and political stalemates to take care of our own, and WE ARE STANDING TALLER TOGETHER.
For years, Kenyans have been pitted against each other by an aristocracy of impotent politicians; a rotten bunch of sitting members that has never stood up for anyone. While our politicians are busy robbing the country blind and devising political strategies on how to hold on to power, Kenyans have come together and joined hands to respond to the plight of our drought-afflicted fellow wananchi in the north.
Political, religious and ethnic differences aside, Kenyans have responded to the crisis by raising almost Kshs 100, 000,000 ($1,094,090) in less than four days. The power of the social media, which brought the dawn of the so-called Arab Spring that saw power going back to the people in North Africa, has been harnessed by venerable Kenyans to reach out to the starving. Through Facebook, radio, TV, newspaper and other media, the distress call has reached the ears of many Kenyans, both locally and abroad, and on July 31st 2011, the first batch of relief material was flagged off from Nairobi to the hard-hit locations. This is a few days after our virtual Minister of Propaganda, Dr. Alfred “Joseph Goebbels” Mutua, claimed that no Kenyan had died of hunger, despite evidence to the contrary.
The mendacity practiced by our tribalist politicians has become the unspoken insult to the intelligence of wananchi. The ill-conceived KKK Alliance (now re-branded as the G7) for example, has spurred extensive condemnation for its exclusivity. Its perilous demise is predictable in its leadership when two out of its three fuglemen have pending subpoenas from the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. When justice strikes the shepherds, the sheep of the KKK flock will be scattered. The same fate awaits other political instruments forged in the furnace of demagogy.
While not a single Kenyan I’ve met seems content with the status quo of our politics, we still pander to tribal politics despite the well-known hazards. Our obsession with mediocrity should surprises no one when we vote for “our man” instead of the best qualified candidate who has our best interest as a country at heart. Only a fool would be astounded to see the parallels where people are starving to death while MPs are working on increasing their bloodsucking salaries. We brought this evil on ourselves when we bent over backwards to put the ticks on our own backs in 2007.
The disgraceful state of the Kenyan political landscape is in a critical need of democratic panel-beating. The Kenyans for Kenya initiative could be the Rubicon towards change. It has proven that solidarity in Kenya is possible. We need to vote out these politicians en masse in the 2012 general elections instead of turning our machetes on our next- door neighbors. The new Constitution has laid ground for the possibility of a people’s leadership that should send home the Kenyattas, the Odingas, the Mois, the Kibakis and the entire Kenyan patriciate. We are about to stand on holy democratic ground, and just like in the gospel song Kiatu Kivue, we need to take off these shoes that are our politicians before we desecrate the hallowed ground.
