Miguna row shows a people resigned to oppression

Lawyer Miguna Miguna is seen in a hospital bed in these pictures he shared with the media ,receiving medical attention iin Dubai on 29th March, 2018 He has was taken ill at Dubai airport. INSET Robin Toskin -The writer is Sports Editor at The Standard.

 

A flurry of jokes in mainstream and social media on the ill-treatment of Miguna Miguna lifts the lid on the extent of how in Carl Ratner’s words, Kenyans as victims of oppression, have become complicit in their own oppression.

 Thousands of Kenyans and sadly, some opinion leaders, hold the view that Miguna’s tribulations are self-inflicted.

That he made his bed of thorns and so lie on it he must. It worries more when respected people like Senior Counsel Ahmednasir Abdullahi tweets thus: “Miguna just wants publicity and useless drama.”

Following Abdullahi’s cue, Dennis Itumbi who carries the title; Senior Director of Innovation, Digital and Diaspora Communication in the Office of the President, tweeted: “Government has offered a courtesy visa to Miguna. A privilege only extended to visiting Government officials.” Kimilili MP Didimus Baraza said: “The government should declare Miguna persona non-grata in all airports manned by Kenya Airports Authority because the drama was unacceptable.” 

The saddest part is how psychologically oppressed Kenyans on social media reacted. In one instance, there is an edited video with a soundtrack of Daudi Kabaka’s patriotic song, Harambee Harambee, plucked from the Kanu era, showing Miguna, supposedly enjoying twist-like dancing style with security agents. At face value, it looks funny.

A closer reading on Psychology of Oppression, however, reveals a depressing state of mind of most Kenyans.

Deriving gratification from Miguna’s suffering is a sickening evidence of an oppressed people. In social studies, Ratner posits that Psychology of Oppression consists among other things, “the morals that accept the oppressive social system as normal and even as ideal, taking pleasure in it, defending it, and rejecting alternatives to it.”

Regaling in the video points to a distorted and corrosive culture developed as a result of years of exploitative social structure, which according to Richard Della Fave, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at North Carolina State University, is rooted in political and economic institutions. Fave says: “That distortion, (believing it is Miguna’s mistake), appears normal and makes it extremely difficult for people to see their situation as it really is.” Again, in Ratner’s extensive research, he makes shocking revelations that the people do not always know they are oppressed, since oppression stunts their rational capabilities.

Damaging years

Elliot Cohen in ‘Two Concepts of Oppression’ goes further to suggest that this culture (of indifference and inability to discern oppression) may be more dangerous and all-pervasive threat than terrorism. To understand how damaging years of oppression has had on Kenyans, one needs to ask the question; how did Miguna find himself in the situation he is in? This is where it all goes wrong because oppression has stunted peoples’ rational and probing abilities.

Miguna was arrested for administering “an illegal oath” on opposition leader Raila Odinga. After dragging him around police stations, the government’s only option of subverting justice was to spirit him out of the country on charges of possessing an “illegal passport.” Whether or not Miguna had an illegal passport (what the oppressing agents drum up) is not the point for the matter was already in Court.

Those poking fun at Miguna fail to heed Martin Niemöller’s chilling warning that ‘first they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out……. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.’

When oppression is institutionalised, it makes domination easier by breaking the spirit of the dominated and by rendering them incapable of understanding the nature of those agencies responsible for their subjugation.

This allows those who benefit from the established order of things to maintain their ascendancy with more appearance of legitimacy. And when Rarieda MP Otiende Amollo says he feels helpless and angry just know that the oppressor is done with the Socialists, Trade Unionists and is now coming for you.

- The writer is Sports Editor at The Standard. [email protected]