Miguna tried, other writers have nothing on poll politics

By Nikko Tanui

In the run-up to the US elections, that eventually saw Barrack Obama beat his rival Mitt Romney to win a second term in office, celebrities like Donald Trump, and Oprah Winfrey used their platforms to try to sway the electorate to their favourite candidates.

Authors like Adam Mansbach and Terry McMillan were not left behind.  For instance, Adam Mansbach used the back drop of his multi-million selling bestseller, Go the F**k to Sleep, by teaming up with Samuel Jackson to do an anti-Mitt Romney ad on September 27, last year, that within 24 hours had more than 1.7 million views and was up past five million views a month later.

“It’s an important election; it’s an important time. We did it to galvanise people, to get some attention, to bring some humour to the process, and do something that would be edgy, and get people talking and be easily distinguishable from the preponderance of other political ads that are out there” Mansbach said.

On her part, bestselling author Terry McMillan of Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got her Groove Back fame, broke her vow to take a break from Twitter to finish her then upcoming book and kept commenting on the daily political happenings.

In the days leading up to the first debate between President Barack Obama and then Republican nominee Mitt Romney, she unleashed the floodgates with tweets like this:

“I wish there was a rule enacted and enforced that would make all candidates retract and admit all falsehoods.” one tweet read.

In a nutshell, American celebrities and authors did not hold back from letting the world know what was on their minds during the campaign period. But back at home the voice of our writers over the on going political scenarios is virtually silent. Let’s give it though to Miguna Miguna, sideshow aside (Read, Come Baby Come!)  The author had the guts to dish out a book, Peeling Back the Mask a volatile book touching on former master, CORD presidential candidate Raila Odinga and his associates.

The writer hoped that by laying bare secretes and the shenanigans around Raila, he would help readers and the Kenyan electorate to see him in a different light and hopefully help them make up their minds.

 Before him, former anti-graft czar, John Githongo attempted to disrobe his former boss, president Mwai Kabaki and his cronies in his book, It’s Our Time to Eat.

Whether Githongo’s book had - and lately Miguna’s will have any impact on the political scene is up to debate and only time will tell.

Nonetheless, effort of the two is worth celebrating in the literary world as they almost single-handedly proved to the current generation of writers that the pen still wilds some potent power because why else would have Githongo and Miguna upset the powers that be with their ‘simple’ books that the two had to temporary flee out of the country until things cooled down? But that is expected – and the good news about it, sometimes the backlash helps sell books! Adam Mansbach, the best selling author, Go the F**k to Sleep, said it best,

“Any time you put out anything political or otherwise and it hits the mainstream, there’s always backlash.  I mean, shit, there was backlash with GTFTS (Go The F**k To Sleep).  If enough people find out about it, a certain percentage of those people are going to flip out and hate it and wild out and send me hate mail and stuff,” he said.

But after all is said and done, picking up the pen is a more legitimate means to attempt to dislodge power from leaders who still want to literally sit on the electorate.

War on bad leadership and what Koigi Wamwere calls negative ethnicity should be fought in all fronts and writers should contribute to it by writing and commenting on pertinent issues especially affecting the common man.