By Tony Kimani:
Today, I will be blunt. Forthright.
Anybody who thinks that we are a democratic country unified in diversity, operating under all those fancy names given to good governance and prosperity, is being dishonest to themselves by every parameter.
Our dam broke and as a result, a deluge of uncertainty is hitting our weak and frail dyke of nationalism and unity. We can attempt, like a number of times before, to assume and gloss over the current flood which has been occasioned by a breach of the banks.
We are treading on murky ground.
The State has been left to run berserk. This State, in as much as our country is concerned, is made up of many, albeit different communities or nations which were brought together by the British protectorate under control of Her Imperial Majesty.
Every community had its own ways of life but in order to conflate and maximize on returns, they were brought together under artificial boundaries and forced to exist as one nation, Kenya.
Communities therefore, acted as the basest and most rudimentary form of this amorphous unity.
It is these communities clumped together, which formed nations, that later gave way to the State. The State is by all dimensions, subservient to these nations. As I have said many times on this agora, a nation is brought into being through the political—and inclusive—will of its citizens, not through mere allocation of names and duties.
The citizens ascribe to the idea of a Nation by willingly accepting to forego their individual ambitions for the betterment of collective aspirations and objectives. The State, which comes into force to ensure that the collective aspirations of the nation are met, is allocated the power to act as the caretaker on behalf of the people.
The State therefore, ought to always act at the behest of peoples’ interest.
Here is where our problems lie.
We have a State which lords over its people, the very source of its existence. We have a State which shows open favoritism to particular communities or pursues interests of a few, at the expense of all.
We have a Head of State who publicly utters unequivocally that his subsistence and that of his Govt. arise from the benevolence of only two communities.
In a country with over 40 communities, such talk and action just goes to negate and subsequently jettison the theory of this highly praised Kenyan Project.
Such a project, based on the aspersions directed to it, by none other than the Head of State himself, died an untimely death, long time ago.
It’s no secret that we are a deeply divided country. We openly hate one another based on the ethnic side one belongs to. We celebrate when other Kenyans from other communities are killed or bludgeoned to death by police, the very same police responsible for offering them protection.
Ours is a country built on hate, vitriol, besmirch and opprobrium.
We celebrate when young children and women are murdered in cold blood. We clap when our Head of State (supposedly one of our own), hurls unprintable names to his competitors. We encourage him to be “firm” when he is misusing State security to maim and murder innocent citizens.
Instead of calling his bluff when he defends continuous plunder of resources, we fall over each other and hail him as the “coolest,” and “developmental conscious,” even after he has mortgaged our entire lives to the Chinese.
We continue to support and tolerate mediocrity when we are misled that a railway built side by side to another pre-existing old railway line, costing a fortune, is among our economic development pillars.
We continue to wallow in debt when billions are poured to build a dual carriageway that will run parallel to those 2 railway lines. As if that is not enough, dear brothers and sisters, one of the railway lines has been allocated other billions to “electrify” the locomotive even when it has been proven that the railway construction was not economically viable.
Why then should the people continue to recognize such a State whose main intent is to embezzle the collective wherewithal and indebt them with expensive onerous loans without getting value for the money?
We should stop being hypocritical and pretend that our problems will go away by themselves or by prayer.
That every disgrace will be forgotten and life will continue “as usual” and that the thieving will go on unimpeded. That the State will continue destroying all the independent constitutional institutions so that it can continue to strut the land like a colossus.
That it will continue to subvert the will of the people during elections and the loser will always be declared the winner and being “sworn in,” the malfeasance notwithstanding.
And when we ask, we are responded to with the usual haughtiness of, “Mtado? Kenya ina wenyewe, jamaa!”
That there will be more Kaburas and Gethis carting away millions from the coffers and nothing is done to them (even after they publicly confess such glaring atrocities). That there will be more debt taken in our names to finance “development projects” even when the debt to GDP ratio is fast approaching 60%?
Nay, more.
This abusive marriage should be dissolved. And people let to go their separate ways. There will be nothing much to lose, after all. Those wishing to continue in these solipsistic aberrations should be left to be.
Those who believe in the existence of paradise and hell, should be prepared to experience the stinging pangs of the latter, right here in Kenya.
Enough is enough. When an operating system becomes dilapidated and dysfunctional, only one action ensures that it is revived:
Restoring factory settings.
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