Era of political grandstanding is gone; only power, beauty of brain are valuable

Tomorrow Sunday November 9 marks 25 years since the Berlin Wall began crumbling. With it came the beginning of the end for totalitarian regimes the world over. If you thought the ensuing wind of change blowing across the world stopped in the ‘90s, you are wrong.

It has continued blowing and we may very well be on the brink of a new phase in the global struggle for liberty. The world is moving into an age in which the power and beauty of the brain will be the most valuable currency. Decadent high handedness and scarecrow methods of the past have no place in the emerging order. This everywhere, without exception.

When Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “global village” in 1962, he possibly had no idea just how so profound this would turn out to be. Already, in 1956, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. had talked of telescopy of time and space. In one of his most famous sermons, titled “Paul’s Letter to American Christians,” Dr. King said in part, “Through your scientific genius, you have been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains . . . You have been able to make it possible to have breakfast in New York and dinner in Paris, France.” Elsewhere, he even joked, “You can leave Tokyo, Japan on Saturday and get to Washington Friday of the same week. If they ask you, ‘When did you leave Tokyo,’ you could very well answer, ‘I left tomorrow.’”

The magic that is the communication revolution has made the world less than a neighbourhood. Communication technology has fused us into one. Even villagers in Emanyulia watch news in Syria and Korea as it breaks. In the old order it took us four days to write a letter and to post it. It took another three to four days for it to get to Nairobi. If it was going to Nyeri, it would do another two days. And depending on the ultimate destination in Nyeri, it might very well take two weeks from Emanyulia to, say Mweiga.

There have been even more challenged times and spaces. As recently as 1873, French novelist Jules Verne was puzzling about the possibility of going around the world in 80 days. It was an impossibility. Today you could do it in a few hours, in the fastest military jets. But what is this compared to the television signal? Present day TV news coverage is instant, or shall we say real time? Online platforms have only complicated issues further. The ordinary global citizen is no longer a passive consumer of news and information. She generates and disseminates news online, real time.

The world has changed. Those who don’t change with it will become irrelevant fossils. There is a new worldview, a new global yearning for freedom, for good governance and just leadership. Let me repeat, the media has changed the world. This is what every leader must know. The leader who still embraces obscurantism and self-mysticism of the past is an endangered species. That is why, at the time of this writing, there is unrest in such far-flung places as Syria, Mexico, Brussels and Jerusalem. People’s eyes have opened up. Their minds, too. If Mikhail Goberchev was talking of Glasnost and Perestroika in 1989, he probably was ahead of his time. The true age of Glasnost is just setting in.

What does all this mean for us in Kenya? It means that politicians and their cronies must keep their hands away from poor people’s pockets and wallets. It means that as a public leader, you are perpetually under scrutiny and you will be told off if you don’t keep to the square of integrity. It also means that you must allow people to ventilate their feelings and thoughts – including and especially about you. That you cannot use Stone Age methods to meet your ends in this age. The age of atavistic violence is long gone.

Let us imagine that a political leader wishes to sack a party official who may, for example, be called Magarer Langat. Lets imagine further that the tough man does not know how to remove our imaginary Magarer. He is going to find that he cannot get away with it scot-free by hiring political party goons and detailing them to manhandle and cast out the unwanted Magarer. The new world of brain beauty and power will not accept this. There are likely to emerge new formations that might even throw out the party boss himself.

People who have been long used to being meek followers of political party barons are beginning to ask why they should be tethered to self-mystifying leaders without clear party or public agenda. Brain beauty and power is likely to see political parties in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa cast out draconian leaders who have long taken them for granted. Even pliant tribal followers can no longer be guaranteed, in the coming days. In space forcibly vacated by a Magarer, youthful brainpower politicians, even from the king’s own tribe, are likely to become openly defiant of the monarch. Political party monarchies and dynasties are in trouble. Monarchs who don’t change in Kenya, for example, will be completely irrelevant at the next General Election. Write this in your diary. You may want to ask me about it.

Outside political party formations, ordinary citizens, for their part, are likely to spring surprises upon national political leaders. We have seen the strongman of Burkina Faso, Blaize Compaore ignobly leave power. This man got into power by overthrowing and killing President Thomas Sankara, who was his friend. They say that those who live by the sword will die by the sword. Compaore has come up against his own “sword moment.” As Prof Wole Soyinka would say, “Take warning my masters, they will scorch you in the end.”

Eventually, the power and beauty of the brain must rule in all spheres of life. An inspector general of the police who thinks his role is to find space for village boys and girls in the force is in trouble. Security forces will no longer be the gravy trains we have known them to be. Directors of national intelligence and Heads of State will also want to know that the gravy train era is now gone. If they will appoint people to office as some form of political reward, then let them prepare to preside over troubled countries and regimes. Theirs will be countries in which civilians swat out armed official detachments like packs of flies. The era of political tough talking and grandstanding is gone. The only thing that will help anybody in the unfolding age is the power and beauty of the brain.