Please unchain Dedan Kimathi, he is the symbol of our freedom

Ray Charles’s Unchain My Heart has been ringing since I saw the image of Dedan Kimathi’s grandson by the same name chain himself to the iconic statue of his grandfather early this week.

The young-old man talked of the torment that he and his family continue to suffer since the loss of their patriarch some 60 years ago, from which they are yet to recover.

So when his mother fell ill, and he couldn’t afford to pay her bills and secure her discharge from hospital, the young-old man did not take a jembe to go till the land, as you and I are likely to do when our parents need help.

He decided to climb up the monument bearing his grandpa’s statue and shout at the top of his voice.

These are not abunuwasi (trickster) antics but the rational strategies of a healthy man with two hands and two legs that he likes to use only in climbing city monuments and reminding Kenyans about his hallowed heritage.

The spectacular success that this Kimathi guy achieved was to remind us how much a sense of victimhood can blight and blind people from seeing opportunities that present themselves for exploitation, and where the passage of time serves not as a balm that heals the heart from secret plight but a wound that festers with hopelessness.

That’s hardly the legacy some of us know from Dedan Kimathi’s story, which we have internalised and drawn from for regular inspiration.

He wouldn’t have spent a day just standing there and shouting for help.