We must guard against sliding into a nation of political extremists

If there is one thing I came to learn early in life about human survival, it is the futility of fear. Fear changes nothing. It blows up mountains of strife out of molehills. Talking of the molehills and anthills of the Savannah, growing up in the African countryside means you must be courageous to survive.

At least that was the wisdom in our childhood days. You had to take every challenge to a totally unnecessary duel with feigned superciliousness; otherwise you became the coward everyone sought out whenever they wanted to punch something. Looking tough, arrogant and unyielding was the done thing, even for closet cowards who ran for the hills whenever fists were clenched.

The wisdom of back then, unfortunately, might not hold today. After discovering Thomas Hobbes and Chinua Achebe, we came to learn that it is foolish to expect to live as a society for many years if everyone bared their chests and clenched their fists. Hobbes opened our eyes to the reality that whenever society stops considering other perspectives, even when they differ with what you believe, we hark back to the law of the jungle where life is solitary and short.

It is not entirely unfamiliar, as we had a taste of it in 2008. We also see it in many parts of the world every waking day. Which makes Achebe’s words brutally immortal: It is in the compound of the coward that we stand and watch the ruins of what used to be the courageous man’s house.

Now, looking at the furore surrounding the Opposition’s bid to oust the electoral agency, one can tell we are fast disregarding Achebe’s advice on strategic cowardice. The chests are all out. And so are the water canons, boots and canisters.

You do not need to ask an opposition adherent what they think of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). They will tell you that the team is not independent and must go home. All of it. They will tell you it has nothing to do with the 2017 elections, but an anti-corruption matter after the Chickengate scandal.

They will tell you that they are exercising their constitutional right to protest and that the so-called alternative ways are non-existent of removing the IEBC team due to Jubilee’s tyranny of numbers in Parliament. They will also say Jubilee has brought back police brutality to suppress alternative views. They will even throw in the sovereignty of the people.

Now you also don’t need to mount any research to find out the Jubilee position. They will tell you that CORD should have looked for an alternative way of pushing out the IEBC team. That it wanted to use the failed push for the Okoa Kenya referendum to whip up euphoria for next year’s polls and are now fumbling for another strategy. That the police are under pressure to stop looting. They will also insist the anti-IEBC rallies have nothing to do with fighting graft and that CORD leaders have been selectively silent over allegations against some in their coalition. Then they will cite national security.

The tragedy is that if you listen to the two sides in isolation, they make perfect sense. And unless a middle ground is sought, preferably mediated by level-headed guys with no direct stake in next year’s polls, the cancer of tribal hatred will continue to spread. It is quite troubling that both sides are warning that if the other side does not stop, and to quote one leader, “Kenya will never be the same again.”

My personal view is that no side should be allowed to clothe partisan agenda in national garb, to the extent of lighting a fire under the country, however progressive their propaganda might sound. This must be demanded of both sides because we are living in times when you can sit at home and decide what whole regions are likely to believe on national issues.

We must let reason prevail and not allow fear-mongering to whip us into the kind of tension that makes an otherwise harmless reptile to bite you.