Fringe parties could save us from failed leadership

In his introduction to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Stephen King envies the reader who is experiencing Golding’s dystopia for the first time. He recalls his own first encounter with Lord of the Flies and Golding’s subsequent testimony on the origins of this disturbing story.

In an audio recording that you can find online, Golding says, “One day I was sitting (on) one side of the fireplace...my wife was sitting on the other... and I suddenly said to her, ‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave, being boys and not little saints as they usually are in children’s books?’”

King encountered Golding at the pre-teen age of 12. Mine came in the last of my teen years, in high school. Through the decades, I have caught myself rereading Lord of the Flies, every so often. It may be only a chapter or two, prompted by some memory, or a passing strong urge.

I do that with other canonical writers all the time. It is delightful and reassuring when a scholar of no less repute than King says of the book that opened his eyes, “The book, of course, was the one you are now about to reread or perhaps (oh, lucky you) to experience for the first time.”

When you have read Lord of the Flies, you discover that you have always known the story. It is only that it had never been put together so systematically before. A bunch of British boys are marooned on a secluded island in wartime. Their efforts to organise themselves in orderly fashion as they wait for rescue fall though from the very start.

The boys steadily degenerate into juvenile savages. Once clad in smart school uniform and in other trappings of civilisation, they become painted naked killers. They throw law and order to the dogs and thirst for blood. Aged only between six and 12, they hunt down each other, keen to murder. “The rules!” their leader shouts in desperation, “You are breaking the rules!” To which someone responds, “Who cares?” in the end, these wanton youth set their island on fire in an effort to capture and kill one of them. It is by something of a miracle that the outside world detects the fire and comes to their rescue.

Who cares? Dereliction of responsibility recalls you to this question — who cares? There is a sense in which my country edges us towards the outlook of clueless pre-teen boys, marooned on a tragic island. Perhaps even more to the point, we take on the outlook of a home in which a wicked angel of doom has killed all the elders, leaving everything under the charge of irresponsible juveniles. Only one thing matters, what individual wild minors could get out of the situation.

Nothing draws us towards this reality more than the political electoral season. There is an unwritten law about elections in my country. Rules, regulations and laws don’t matter. Anything and everything goes. At the apogee of the application of this law, we set the country on fire 10 years ago. Like Golding’s self-destructive youth, the outside world came to our rescue after seeing our smoke and fire.

We have entered the smoke and fire season again. Is it perhaps useless to ask for restraint? Is it not easy to see where our priorities are? While hospitals across the country have remained in paralysis for two months, even the political opposition has only woken up to this reality after seeing the opportunity to shed a few crocodile tears. They have been quick to visit the medics in prison and in the courts for the photo opportunities. At all other times it has been business as usual.

The opposition has also not visited the drought and famine stricken parts of the country to assess the situation and to find out how best it could intervene. Nor has it done anything useful about the strike by public university dons. When will this government-in-waiting know how to resonate with the people?

But why the opposition when there is an elected government? Shouldn’t these questions be addressed to the sitting government? I consider it laughable to expect anything from the government. From the first day, this has been a hopelessly hamstrung government, full of fairy tales. Its focus has been on telling imaginary stories about imaginary accomplishments. They have built 10,000 kilometres of imaginary roads. They have created four million imaginary jobs, at the rate of one million new jobs each year. They have placed imaginary laptops in the hands of imaginary children in imaginary primary schools across the country.

In the end, the government makes our country a strand of the imaginary lands Ustadh Shaaban Bin Robert called Kusadikika and Kufikirika. While the Jubilee government is real, all its major accomplishments only live in the imagination. It is not surprising that faded pollsters who seem to function only in hired gears continue to give them sterling ratings. But the secret is in the open. A leading political family in the country is the owner of this particular research company. Please understand its opinion polls behind this knowledge.

This brings us back to the political opposition. These fellows must begin behaving like a responsible government-in-waiting. Kenya begins looking like it cannot afford another five years under Jubilee. Will this government not literally steal and eat up all of us — without exception? But if the mainstream opposition cannot behave any different from Golding’s “clueless juvenile delinquents” who are running down the country, then we must begin taking most seriously the so-called “minor presidential candidates” and their “minor political parties.” For maybe this is where our salvation ultimately rests? As President Uhuru Kenyatta keeps saying, “Don’t say you were not cautioned.”