Time for Kenyans to stand up and be counted

Tania Ngima

Mediocrity is described as something that espouses qualities that are moderate, low, unremarkable or average.

In the past couple of weeks, we have been thrown into the vortex of scandals, scams and downright poor leadership.

And I cannot help but wonder what we have done to co-create our current reality.

It is said that while good leaders bring about transformation, poor leaders only maintain and preserve long-standing mediocrity.

A few days ago, I was decrying our leadership and declaring my stand on the common notion that we do not deserve the poor leadership we are experiencing across various realms.

A friend who was party to the discussion and who has been a therapist in the past explained the concept of co-creation and why we need to look within ourselves to explain why we keep getting the short end of the stick. She gave an analogy of bad bosses in the workplace.

Apparently, if you find yourself a constant victim, the fact that you are the common denominator is a sign that you are contributing to the situation and you are less of a victim than you acknowledge.

In the same way, it seems that we are co-creating the mediocrity that we are currently experiencing.

My question, though, is why are we so comfortable receiving average, unremarkable services and leadership, do we not deem ourselves as worthy of better?

Where does this attitude come from and do we have any right to expect better if we ourselves are also carrying around these attitudes as we navigate life?

Do we deserve anything other than mediocrity in the public space, are we really entitled to better governance?

For a start, we elect leaders based on the fact that when seeking votes, none of the front-runners announce that they will ignore us until the next election cycle and make promises they have no intention of making good on.

If they did this, we would not elect them. Or would we?

And yet we keep going to the polls, playing the tribe and party card to justify our poor choices and expecting different results when there is no track record to prove otherwise.

When I see the conversations on social media every time a scandal breaks, there are always a couple of people who start a thread implying that fingers are being pointed at the flag bearers of certain political parties because of the ethnic and party allegiance, and not because the fraud was actually committed.

Sometimes I want to join in the fray and ask these people whether they think the theft discriminates between taxes that are paid by citizens affiliated to different parties, so that their funds are left intact building the nation while ours are used to line the thieves' purse strings.

And then I decide not to bother because, surely, no rational person would adopt this line of reasoning, right?

However, as long as every discussion around mediocrity in governance continues to degenerate into one about tribe and party affiliation, we can be sure that the scandals and scams that we keep unearthing are only the tip of the iceberg.

We have just under a year to identify mediocrity and decry it, if we truly believe that we deserve better.

I also, in the past few days, have heard the notion that when you have two middling options, you pick the lesser evil.

I am curious, are we really willing to hand over the destiny of our country, our future and our children's futures to 'the lesser evil'?

Is this the extent of our apathy, our unwillingness to demand for better because we think we only deserve average?

Are we consciously enabling mediocrity and even more important, how do we stop throwing away our future for this?

It is really not as complicated as we would like to believe.

I recently came across photos of the heavy handedness that accompanied the citizens who decided to march against corruption.

How many of us, when this conversation started gave nothing more than a fleeting thought to standing up for our rights?

If you are like me, and I acknowledge that I am part of the problem, you convinced yourself that you had too much at stake to join in the stand against corruption, or that your day was too busy earning a living or you could not afford to be affiliated with the expected running battles, what would your employer think of you?

It is so much easier to express our indignation from behind the veil of anonymity, from behind our laptop screens, from the comfort of our homes and offices. It is so much simpler to hide behind technology where our risk is minimal.

Sadly though, low risk equals low returns and as long as we continue to hedge our level of risk, maybe we do not deserve the right to demand anything other than mediocrity from anyone else.

If we do not all stand up against the vices of corruption and sleaze, we will not win this war. And we will have no one to blame but ourselves.