Naughty Schoolboys, leaders in waiting

By Ted Malanda

When my friend’s mum retired five years ago from her primary school teaching job, I enquired what gave her the most pleasure in her 30 years of service.

"I enjoyed teaching those small, naughty boys who are always pinching others and getting up to all sorts of mischief in class," she responded without a second thought. That shocked me coming from Mrs Mbogo — one those serious old mamas that you don’t mess around with.

"Even when I continually complained about their bad behaviour and canned them," she explained, "I always knew that they were the ones who would succeed later in life. And they have proved me right. They have done very well."

Proven theory

The old lady was actually summing up a theory that most primary school teachers know at heart but which, curiously, escapes their more cerebral colleagues in high school and the university.

In primary school, if you are a perpetual latecomer and the teachers discover that you are too smart to get caught, they simply make you a bell ringer. That way, they slyly transform slackers who hate school into dutiful kids who are first to arrive and the last to leave. No more playing truant and hopping over the fence an hour late. Case closed.

When you are the type who is always on every noisemaker’s list, they appoint you class prefect and force you to shut other motor mouths up. If they discover you are a bully, they make you games prefect and force you to dissipate your energy by kicking leather balls and running all over the place.

High school is different. As soon as students check in, they are read the Riot Act and introduced to school rules by the headmaster. The place runs like a military barracks: No one talks back, everyone is expected to be the same and dissent is either neutered by a swashbuckling and stern-faced discipline master or by suspension, even expulsion, from the institution.

Meanwhile, bearded history teachers are taking the same kids through revolutions and the exploits of heroic leaders — Fidel Castro, Kungu Karumba and Nelson Mandela. These, the ‘bad’ boys and girls tearfully embrace as heroes. The shaggy literature guru adds fire to the whole mix by guiding the students through nuances of public debate. It’s just that no one expects the kids to put any of these to practice.

Thus when — like Dedan Kimathi — students chant, "We want justice," they are suspended from school and ordered to uproot ancient tree stumps. Before you know it, they are launching guerrilla warfare and hurling Molotov missiles into the headmaster’s office.

Brilliant fellows

Amazingly, some of these rebels end up at the university where they stand on tables, buy mandazi for voters, get elected as student leaders and promptly get expelled. They flee into exile and conclude their studies at Dar es Salaam and Harvard — universities that apparently have no qualms turning hooligans with dodgy school leaving certificates into leaders. That is how the James Orengos of this world were created.

Certainly, Musa Sirma, Martha Karua, Raila Odinga and Bonny Khalwale were not model students. They pinched others, disrupted class with cheeky comments, drew cartoons of teachers on the walls and challenged the burly dining prefect to a fight time and again. Now they are leaders.

But the good boys and girls in the class are the ones who sit mute in matatus and endure insults and harassment from touts. They are the diligent public servants who retire in penury as the noisemakers loot government coffers and invest the proceeds in magnificent village villas.

You can’t fault them though: They were bred, trained and conditioned not to lead, but to follow rowdy noisemakers.