By Kipkoech Tanui
This is the story of Mwalimu Kamau whose marital philosophy our restless politicians, who campaign 24/7, have learnt fast.
Kamau’s wife, also a teacher, abdicated to her parents’ home. However, on her way to school every morning she would pass by Mwalimu Kamau’s home. Her husband, when he could no longer stand the ‘cold’, devised a rude, but witty, strategy to get her back.
He went shopping and bought three women’s panties and every morning he would ‘dry’ one alongside his trouser and shirt on the fence of his compound. The first day he put out the white one, second day, yellow and the third day, the red one.
Mrs Kamau could stand it no more, her stomach churned from the first day. She worried who the hell Kamau’s live-in mpango wa kando (sexual partner) was. On day four she walked into her home ready to scratch and bite off the ears of the husband snatcher. Mrs Kamau’s bubble that she is ‘irreplaceable’ was burst and the rest is history!
In our politics, this philosophy is applied thus; seduce a popular partner, forge alliances, fight tooth and nail for election victory. To ensure you have constant attention, flirt with other suitors, even if already engaged to other partner(s). We probably have so many of these small clothes on the political hanging lines, along with many leaders burning with rage that their partner(s) have abdicated.
The flipside is there are many politicians who, like Mrs Kamau, will take off at the slightest opportunity, but deep inside they are not prepared for the consequences. They want to have their cake and eat it! This lot is goaded by a cry for attention, gyrate the hip on the political stage, wink at the next promising guy (or girl), and take off with them but once out, images of hanging lingerie sweep them back.
Rope of convenience
The story of Mr and Mrs Kamau teaches us several things about our politicians. First, the tree of political unions that flourish during campaigns are watered, not by the principle of love, belief in capacity to deliver and a happy union. It does not therefore ask the question: What is there for the country or my ‘people’?
Two, it is a relationship anchored by the rope of convenience, and in the heat of elections, you can chop off someone’s head if he stands in the way of your partner(s). But after polls, there is forensic audit. The result always is the same — a search for a new home begins. That is why in Orange Democratic Movement and Party of National Unity, the floodlights of flirting blind us on newspapers and TV screens. We must be a nation of cheaters and swingers!
Third, from what some senior partners say in these parties, like calling those on whose shoulders they rode to victory mavi ya kuku (chicken s**t), Mr Kamau, too, is not sinless. Mrs Kamau may actually have been the victim of his treachery and probable secret liaison. She could then have chosen to come back and live with her problem hoping a solution would fall from heaven.
Fourth, those of us who thronged the colourful wedding, supported these partner(s) with all we had (some even paid with their blood), are left with a bitter taste. We marvel at what the hullabaloo was all about.
Sadly, even in the unions that on the face of it look solid, beneath the veneer are secret liaisons and come-we-stay phases. You have even seen both partners funding elders from their side to intercede with those across the ridge!
Fifth, the nation’s confidence in institutions of political marriages is eroded and we come to believe politics, not the politicians, is a bad profession.
Voter apathy creeps in along with our disengagement and the make-believe political marriages flourish, watered by money and power deals.
The vicious circle continues because we have lost hope, and we forget that when the partner(s) fight, some of us will be used to break up anything that looks like an upcoming wedding by the cheating partner!
Cheating and divorces
But somewhere down the road, they reunite leaving us wondering how to relate with the other partner. What with the words we said which cannot be taken back and the blood on our hands!
Maybe we should have learned from the late Ronald Reagan: "It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned it bears a striking resemblance to the first."
But between the separations, cheating and divorces, as author Ambrose Bierce said, "Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others."
We do not have leaders with the courage of King Edward VIII of England who in 1936 abdicated the throne to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson because the English would never have accepted her to be their Queen.
Yes, we Kenyans elected a cabal of pretenders to govern us.
—The writer (ktanui@standardmedia.co.ke) is The Standard’s Managing Editor, Daily Editions.