Don’t take us seriously: We’re intellectual mercenaries

By G Odera Outa

The deliberately sarcastic title for this piece is my enduring recollection of writer John Mulaa’s penultimate constipation with Kenya’s ‘bull politics’ that characterised the landscape in much of 1980-2002. Its undying memorabilia is that infamous group of scholars who back then, would lie for just about anything, to gain access to the bounties of the Moi State.

Sadly, there are ominous signs that a similar constellation of hatchet men (and women) are back in our mid. As you have seen already, these ladies (and gentlemen) claim great ‘honorifics’, ‘professor so and so; lawyer so and so. Their not so subtle motive is to profiteer, particularly from the plight of William Ruto, Uhuru Kenyatta, and Francis Muthaura. You can spot the lot from the skewed analyses and wilful distortions of even the most obvious facts in the ongoing International Criminal Court (ICC) saga.

By this time next year, you can be sure they will have kept the media awash with all manner of crude propaganda. Back in 1992, the lot was remarkable for the overnight transformation into savvy suits, tweed jackets and the piggy show of ostentatious consumption. We may never have reached there for now, but make no mistake: you will never see any sign that these are fellows to even believe in their own pieces of advise.

Now, consider this: the reality is that most African countries have no capacity to seriously challenge the current international order-let alone the ICC and the Security Council of the United Nations. If, as these prophets say, the AU were to engineer a mass walkout from the ICC, or the UN, where would they end up? Where would Igad — a constellation of largely vulnerable, war-torn African countries — go to? Is it not a fact that these are countries that need the best of the international good will rather than the suicidal arrogance?

When we all know that most intra-African organisations can barely run their budgets and AU is a major study in Africa’s historical contradictions, can you as a scholar insist that such an organisation has the wherewithal to threaten anyone on the international stage?

Younger readers may want to know that in those heady days that so-pained John Mulaa, some ‘professionals’ spent a good part of their time castigating any pro-democracy exponents while extolling the virtues of the one party State. Professors were literally forced to report that Kenya had viable quantities of gold and other pricey minerals such as iron ore in Lolgorian. And you now know the real genesis of Goldenberg.

So, why need I revel so far back into history every so often? It is because, I quite honestly think that the shameless reincarnation of the era of absurd logic and self-serving opportunistic arguments makes one feel that Kenya has once again hit a de javu; the journey to nowhere. The mantra peddled that AU countries can stage a run in on the ICC; or that they will leave the UN because of the refusal to defer Kenya’s case is a despicable piece of intellectual hogwash. Or else, just tell me where they plan to go.

It should by now be clear enough that the main idea that these peddlers of falsehoods want is a reckless, irresponsible and perhaps a dysfunctional Kenya. How else do you explain the insistence that there are some so-called ‘African solutions’ that are distinct and apart from other human aspirations in the rest of the world.

Dr Outa Works as Communications Advisor in the Office of the Prime Minister of Kenya.