NAIROBI: Pretenders to the mantle of the feminist movement in Kenya are, in my view, a fraud and suffer collective amnesia. I don’t normally pick on women leaders for censure, given their propensity to hide under a veneer of innocence even when they are as incorrigible as any man.
I have never understood why women leaders wearing the badge of ‘politician’ believe any one of them is the embodiment of the entire Kenyan womanhood.
I don’t understand what gives them the sense of entitlement to special treatment in a world where everybody must fend for themselves or die on their own.
When a woman leader or several of them for that matter threaten to strip in public in solidarity with a beleaguered female colleague, I get amused and disgusted in equal measure.
Besides being a public display of absurdity at its apogee, what’s there to see in a naked woman’s body that can possibly bring the apocalypse prematurely? It is naive and demeaning of Kenyan female leaders to imagine a naked woman would intimidate men. On the contrary, that would be unsolicited pornography, which the government frowns upon. The nonsense about ‘curses’ is a relic of a dead African belief lost on the horizon of time in a thoroughly digital world.
Our women leaders should start pushing ideas and ideals objectively.
Since the Anne Waiguru saga hit public limelight, I get aggrieved when women leaders proclaim to an indifferent world she is hard working and has given the youth of this country jobs clearing trenches through the National Youth Service.
Unless proponents of this line of thinking want us to believe NYS is the personal flagship of Anne Waiguru; a private company like Virgin Atlantic is to Sir Richard Branson, any Tom, Dick and Harry in her place would still give jobs to struggling, educated and disillusioned youth.
NYS is a Government project that will run with or without specific individuals at the helm. The money that runs NYS comes from the public coffers; the taxes we pay.
Where are these mega feminist hailers when rapists, sometimes after sedating women, go ahead to commit despicable acts?
How many of them took to the streets or threatened to strip in defence of women who have been abused this way?
How many took to the streets when stories of male Members of Parliament mistreating women featured strongly in the media lately? How many raised a finger when madam Charity Ngilu was being tossed around?
Do we take it that these poor women are of a lesser God; that they were not deserving of their leaders’ undivided attention?
The Kenyan woman today is not better off than she was a couple of years back because she lacks focused leaders to champion her rights. A smattering of a few selected strip-tease stars in Parliament who supplicate and willingly play second fiddle to men in positions of leadership is not a measure of progress or achievement for women.
Renown female leaders the world over did not make names and leave legacies courtesy of tribal hegemony, sycophancy or freebies.
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Benazir Bhutto and Sonia Gandhi lost their husbands to assassins but never stripped to get sympathy.
Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Yingluck Shinawatra, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf challenged men on their own terms without appealing to their femininity and made it to the apex.
Mr Chagema is a correspondent with The Standard
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