Welcome to theatre made in Kenya

The Kenya National Theatre is patronised by some pretty weird characters. A number would perhaps be given a red-carpet welcome at a mental hospital.

Even when they don’t sport dreads on their heads or earrings and rings in all sorts of places, creative artists exhibit some rather cranky characteristics.

I considered the theatre a unique place until this referendum business started. On one hand, we had people blowing hot air about nothing. We had ‘leaders’ defecting from one camp to another to please friends and spite their enemies.

We have seen the miracle of religious leaders defecting from the ‘No’ side to the ‘Yes’ camp, depending, of course, on which side of the constitutional debate their tribal leader was rooting for.

We have had villagers stoning helicopters and punctured politicians salivating for senate seats and county governor positions that are so far non-existent. Not surprisingly, opinion polls have been doctored, are plain bogus, wrong or excellent depending on which side of the political hangman’s noose one was standing.

And then we have had the ‘professor of politics’ lending his 50-plus years of political experience to the ‘No’ campaign. Of course there are certain people who think that the retired president should sit under a tree at his Kabarak home and watch his cows chewing the cud into the sunset. What they forget, however, is that siasa ni Moi na Moi ni siasa. You can’t separate the two.

Little cockfight

But what a bore the campaigns for the referendum have been. Very little money was poured and even this was ‘eaten’ by dodgy NGOs pretending to be offering civic education and politicians, not the voters who are, so to speak, the rightful eating stakeholders.

But that was until President Kibaki fired a salvo at his predecessor in his usual roundabout manner. Those who don’t know Moi imagined that the old man would let the matter rest but of course he fired back. Now people are saying, "No! No! No! – Kibaki should not have said that — hakuna haja." And others are saying, "Ooh, Moi should not have said that – ooh..." Come on, people, what is a little cockfight between elders?

Unlike, say, the tiffs between Raila and Ruto, which are invariably filled with rough insults, these elders are sparring in a most decorous manner and unleashing witty and stinging brickbats that will be remembered for generations. Besides, this is Kenya, a land where democratic space is as wide as the Indian Ocean.

Retirement home

In some countries like Zambia, Moi would have been declared stateless as the state sought excuses not to pay him a house allowance while attempting to haul him before a magistrate on trumped up charges.

In Ghana, retired President Jerry Rawlings is a squatter in a friend’s house because his retirement home got burnt down. In fact, it’s his friends who are holding harambees to pay for the repair. In Botswana, retired president Festus Mogae is saddled with a decrepit house where nothing works and fundis keep strolling in and out of his bedroom. It’s such countries that give Africa a bad name.