We do society gross injustice when we lavish extravagant praise on the dead

The loss of human life is a terrible thing. It is painful for the bereaved family and the friends. Common decency dictates that we should respect the sensibilities of those in mourning. Put differently, this has been called “respecting the dead.” Mark Antony tells us in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.”

Here in Africa, does the converse of this Shakespearean aphorism seem to be the case? The ill that men do is interred with their bones. Indeed, it seems to die with them. Africa buries saints. All dead people are angelic. Everyone praises them, including those who never gave them a dog’s chance in life. Some have said, “What is the import of saying uncomfortable things about the dead? What will it change? Aren’t they dead?”

Yet is this a narrow interpretation of social commentary? In matters such as these, I am by guided by the wisdom of Michel de Montaigne. The great French Renaissance thinker famously said, “It is a custom of our justice to punish some as a warning to others. For to punish them for having done wrong would, as Plato says, be stupid: what is done cannot be undone. The intention is to stop them from repeating the mistake or to make others avoid their error.” In the end, those who occupy public space must pay the price of honest appraisal, regardless that they are dead or alive.

But how do you stop the dead from repeating their error? Fine gentlemen serve the public as models to follow. Even a dead man can serve as a model to follow. Conversely, he could serve as a model to avoid.

As Montaigne would say, the act of publishing and indicting the imperfections of the dead may teach someone how to fear them. It may teach them to avoid such imperfections. We do society gross injustice when we lavish extravagant praise, saying of dead people things that they never were in life. A responsible option to honesty would be to keep quiet.

We have recently lost Joseph Kamotho, the gentleman who at the apogee of his political career told us that Kanu would rule over Kenya for 100 years. This proclamation has usually been wrongly attributed to President Moi.

However, it was Mr Kamotho who first went to town with this edict. The struggle for restoration of multiparty democracy in Kenya was on in earnest, at the time. Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Ahmed Bamariz, Philip Gachoka, Masinde Muliro, James Orengo and Martin Shikuku had just done the impossible. They had called the Kanu Government’s bluff.

Against all conventional wisdom, they drove to Kamukunji, amidst live gunshots. Their mission was to address a pro-multiparty rally. Kanu had promised them disaster. They said to Kanu, “Bring it on.” And with that the wheel of history turned. The Forum for Restoration of Democracy (FORD) reopened the door to political pluralism in Kenya.

But there were those who did not believe that change had come. Kamotho was one of them. Mwai Kibaki ridiculed those crusading for pluralism. “They are day dreaming,” he said, “Trying to remove Kanu from power is like cutting the mugumo tree with a razor blade.” Kalonzo Musyoka said it was a show of disrespect to President Moi to imagine that Kanu could leave power. He accused Jaramogi of “bad manners.” William Ntimama said it was a tribal agenda to grab power. He told members of that tribe, “When we speak, you should lie low like an envelope (lala chini kabisa kama bahasha.” He called them the Ibo of Kenya and cautioned them that what had happened to the Ibo of Nigeria would also happen to them. He was referring to the massacre of the Ibo in the Nigerian civil war of 1967 – 1970.

It is important that we do not falsify history, just because someone has died. Kamotho served in that draconian government. As party secretary general, he was the principal spokesman who justified all these things that his sidekicks said.

And he spoke with vile passion. When in 1992 and 1997 he remained with Kanu while the rest of his province voted against Kanu, it was not because he was hostile to tribalism, as Deputy President William Ruto stated at his funeral. It was because he was against the return of democracy that the political thrust in his home province was calling for. He was his master’s voice in the affront against democracy and good governance.

So why did Kamotho fall out with Mzee Moi, in the end? Kamotho was part of the bandwagon that left Kanu because of the failed Uhuru Project of 2002. In the lead up to the project, President Moi jilted him, giving his favourite secretary general’s position to Raila Odinga in the infamous merger between Moi’s Kanu and Odinga’s National Development Party (NDP).

Another casualty at the February 2002 Kanu jamboree in Kasarani was the late Prof George Saitoti. Their piquancy turned into rebellion when in October President Moi declared Uhuru his preferred successor. Kamotho was willing to throw in the lot with Odinga and others whom he previously had absolutely no time for.

Kamotho will also go down in history as one of the politicians who fell in dishonour alongside Charles Njonjo in 1983, when the Minister for Constitutional Affairs was accused of plotting to remove Mzee Moi from power.

After a lot of whistling in the dark about “a traitor” who thought that he could be President, Elijah Mwangale of Bungoma East eventually proclaimed in Parliament, “Njonjo you are the traitor we are talking about.” Earlier, Shikuku had hinted of “a traitor who wears pin stripped suits.” Others who fell with Njonjo included the then Minister for Local Government and MP for Kajiado South, the late Stanley Shapashina Ole Oloitiptip and an erstwhile Moi favourite, (now Senator) G G Kariuki.

Oloitiptip, a flamboyant flabby individual who was overly mesmerized with office and wealth, could not see how he could live without power. He died. A few weeks before he packed up, he told the Press, “The Maasai are asking, ‘Where is the flag?’” The sad saga of the last days of the ebullient Maasai elder is a story for some other day. But Kamotho survived to tell another story.

He returned in the infamous Mlolongo elections of 1988, where winners were declared losers and losers winners. He was rescued from the dustbin of history as part of Kanu’s ploy to cut down Kenneth Matiba, whose star was on the rise. An angry Matiba declared that enough was enough. He would no longer keep quiet in the face of injustice, he said, “From now onwards, the fight for the restoration of Kenya to a free, fair and just society is on, regardless of the price.” He paid by being detained without trial and coming out of detention thoroughly disabled. Somewhere in all this was the hand of Kamotho.

It is wrong for politicians to mislead generations that were not born when this ugly history was happening. Mercifully, we were around – some of us – witnessing and recording all this. In the end, Kamotho has died a lonely man; the man who once told Kenyans, “It is very lonely at the top where we sit.” However, may God rest his soul in eternal peace. And may the rest of us take a few lessons.