Henry Munene
Four years ago, South Sudanese poet and cultural critic Taban Lo Liyong flew to Nairobi to submit his final draft of a play, The Colour of Fate, which is based on the 2008 post-election violence. After long evening meetings, where we tried to fine-tune the play, I asked the controversial doyen of African literature what he thought was wrong with leadership in Kenya.
What followed was a lecture on how societies court disasters when they decide to manipulate the leadership of younger generations. Instead of letting their children grow up naturally, many ‘kings’ decide who among them should emerge as leaders, as a way of perpetuating their leadership unto infinity.
Another thing that elders seem not to learn is that values in a society keep changing; the sage went on in between sipping his wine. And so it is important to let children freely discuss the issues facing their generation without being stifled through political or cultural edicts that governed the world of their predecessors. “It is what we don’t talk about that we fight about,” Prof Taban reiterated, a truism that artistically runs throughout the play.
I get lots of literary inspiration from the author of Meditations in Limbo, Words that Melt a Mountain, Eating Chiefs and The Last Word, among other texts. I also gain poignant insights on the irony of our time where authorities suppress basic freedoms in the name of maintaining peace; yet perhaps broadening these freedoms is what could make such societies more stable in the long-term.
So when I recently heard that the security chiefs in the country were asking people to avoid getting huddled in groups to discuss politics, I realised how complex our problems as a country are.
It is one thing to ask the youth to stop congregating into bunge la wananchi groupings and quite another to control their less-than-cultured debate on social media.
As a firm believer in freedom of association and freedom of expression, I believe those who abuse freedom of expression by spreading hatred on Facebook and Twitter are as dangerous to our future as a stable nation as those who cite the abuse of freedom by a few to suppress the freedoms of even those who are exercising their freedoms responsibly.
Those who have in the past hijacked peaceful demonstrations to loot property, stone innocent motorists and even kill others, besides committing other heinous acts, only serve to give an excuse to those who would want to curtail our constitutionally-guaranteed rights. Going forward, Kenyans must realise that the best way to guard their right to association and expression is first by showing they realise that rights are not an end, but a means to a more stable society.
They must therefore say no to those who post ethnic hatred on their walls on Facebook and refuse to retweet the venom flying around on Twitter, besides ignoring politicians’ coded incitement that is passed off as exercising of freedom.
Otherwise our ability to use these rights responsibly will continue being cited to a point where we retrogress till we find ourselves back to the streets to regain rights we had already attained. It is this inability to enjoy freedom without threatening our own future that is being subtly sneered at by those who have been carping on and on about our penchant for spreading peace messages ahead of the polls.
For what, pray, is the need to fuel anarchy when we know it is our children and country at stake and not the countries of those who would rather we drop the peace messages, go to the streets and open a window for looting and violence, alongside acres of newspaper space in the western media where the bottom-line will be, ‘you see, they cannot govern themselves’?
We need to isolate cases of freedom abuse from genuine and responsible utilisation of basic freedoms for a better Kenya, for as the old Sudanese poet would say, it is what we don’t talk about that we fight about.
