KENYA BEYOND 2005

Drastic times call for drastic measures. Dawa ya moto ni moto. I believe in the gospel of ruthlessness to combat ruthlessness. At times like these I would take the bible literary an arm for an arm and an eye for an eye. We have let the thugs rule our lives; they control our very movement and even extort tolls on us.

The government stands indicted over all these through its indifference and ineffective soft gloves policy. The government is pandering these thugs because the elections are nigh. But the peace loving, hand-working people of Kenya are condemned to a life of fear and despondency. The people have become prisoners in their own homes. The greatest worry of the Kenyan driver is the hijacker; the slowing down at every corner or pothole is a threat to the driver and his vehicle. Yet we do nothing concrete to combat this menace. Since when did the thugs heed the surrender ultimatum? Who in their right mind will surrender the tools of their trade? They will simply devise new methods of hiding the weapons and continue to use them on the innocent wananchi. That is why I said I believe in combating fire with fire. It is wasted labor and time to just declare verbal war on crime, we declared this war eon ago and we are still losing. The war against crime will not be fought with mere declarations, not even meeting with the top cops and top administrators, the war will be worn when the government realizes that the criminals have no respect for human rights and their humans rights deserve no respect.

I advocate the ruthless approach. If in the process some innocent people will be inconvenienced, too bad. But it is better to be temporarily inconvenienced than to be permanently obliterated by the thugs. We need an operation, call it ‘anvil’ or whatever and swoop on those known sections of the city harboring the criminals and screen everybody. Go from door to door, in the process pick every suspect (and weapon) and haul him or her before the law. Do this for every notorious section of the city and country. Let the politicians yell harassment, haul them in too if they block the operation. If they have a better plan they should have brought it forward by now. Get the GSU, APs. Regular police, City Council askaris and even Game wardens involved, after all some of these criminal behave worse than wild animals.

We must hit these criminals hard and deny them space to carry out their evil mission. In the worst scenario lets get the army involved. The cattle’s rustling across Kenya/Uganda, Kenya/Sudan, and Kenya/Ethiopian borders is a sure cause for the army to be involved. Get the police from those areas and deploy them in the urban areas and deploy the army to patrol these international borders. It is in their mandate to protect the country from external enemies, what other evidence do we need when the rustlers cross those boundaries?

Force must be met with force. You cannot call thugs to a round table negotiation. Do you negotiate with a thief when he breaks into your house? No! You hit him hard where it hurts just as he is trying to hit you. Our government should not succumb to the thugs, their masters and hirelings, if the government is not complicit in these actions why don’t we see drastic measures being taken and not just being wished or talked about? At what number shall we see actions? How many more must die before we take off the gloves and fight bare knuckle with these thugs?

When innocent scholars are killed the world notices. When foreigners are robbed the world notices. When the government does nothing beyond rhetoric, the world notices. When France reacts and suggests relocation of UNEP we shout it’s unfair and subtly cry racism. As Kenyans we may be immune to the insecurity but in the international arena, a threat to personal safety is a major concern. We therefore need to be ruthless, merciless and determined to eradicate all criminals from wherever they are in the country. Criminals don’t belong with the law-abiding citizens they belong in the prisons until they reform. If we have to be ruthless to send them there so be it. If some toes have to be trodden in the process, so be it, but the balm of their healing will be more soothing and appreciated than the scars of the thugs’ pangas and bullets.

I look forward to the day when Nairobi drivers will be able to drive with their windows down and even signal with their hands knowing their watches are safe. I look forward to the day when metal grills and doors, high walls and electric fences, armed watchmen and gatekeepers will be relegated to the jails and prisons. As it is now, Kenyans go from office to prisons where they lock themselves all night. We have learnt to become a nation of cowards surrendering our rights to the thugs and secluding ourselves in our own cocoons and assume that we are free and safe.

We cannot be a free people as long as we have succumbed to the fear of the thugs, the fear of the hijacker, the fear of the rapist; we must turn the tide and make the thug start fearing the law-abiding citizen. We need drastic measures. This is not the time to play politics. There is too much at risk and we dare not be soft. The time for talk and ultimatum is gone let us now act. For too long we have given ultimatums but there are no consequences following the lapse of those ultimatums. The thugs know this and are willing to call the government’s bluff. Let us declare war on the thugs, real war, not the hitherto war of words. Let us forage their hideouts, waste them and their plans, parade their carcasses and haunt their friends and comrades and give them no peace. Peace is for the law abiding, the hard working tax paying people of Kenya. Not for bandits, thugs, criminals, carjackers, rapists and other convoluted sadistic Neanderthals masquerading as respectable citizens by day and thugs by night.

Of late there has been talk that Kibaki broke a ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’ arrived at prior to the 2002 elections. It is possible there was such an agreement among the parties involved. It is also possible that one of them is not telling the whole truth. It is even possible that all parties are not telling the whole truth. But that is a matter of conjecture whose veracity is very circumspect. What is now evident, and should have been all along, is that politics is a matter of convenience and expedience not about truth and facts. If politics was about truth, George Bush would be in prison over WMD, Saddam would still be lording it over the Kurds.
Politics is a matter of pandering the most good to suit the circumstances, not a matter of showing what a gentleman you are. Ask any Kenyan politician, none can make it in politics if they always told the truth. You have to promise heaven to the electorate and sacrifice your trueness to be relevant in the scheme of things political. Kenyans have been tuned to expect this of their politicians and gentlemen is not their title.
So what if Kibaki acceded to a gentleman’s agreement, this is a matter brokered by parties who can no longer sit down together and even share a cup of tea. Whether it was an agreement among individuals or among political parties, the field has changed drastically and is no longer feasible to enforce it, if at all this was an original intention.
When Raila, Kalonzo, and co walked out and formed different entities, the intent of the agreement was negated as the agreement could only work if the parties continued to be in harmony. By walking out on Kibaki, they walked out of all that held them together, i.e. the gentlemen’s agreement. This was not a social contract with the Kenyan people, who are the ultimate deciders on such issues, it was a matter of political convenience and expediency at a crucial moment in the change of political leadership in our country. The matter has not been in the public domain and the piece-meal nature of its release smirks of desperation and blabbering. If it was very crucial, it should have been hammered from the day Kibaki was sworn and we should have accepted it by now. Nevertheless, the politics of the day desires that Kibaki offer himself for re-election. Let those opposed to this convince the electors that he does not deserve a second term.
ODM-Kenya should learn from the events of 2002 agreement that boardroom brokerage, of political dispensation, is a fluid and volatile engagement acting as a bridge to the vast fertile plains of national largesse. When the people are not involved in the selection process of their flag-bearers, any backroom agreements are subjected to the whims of the selected leader, more so if they are unwritten. Such agreements become secondary to the wishes of the electorate. The selected leader will always fall back on the adage that it is the will of the people when breaking such agreements.
The elections should not be decided on the basis of who agreed with who about what, the elections should be about what has been done and what is going to be done. They should be about deciding who is capable and is best placed to lead the country to claim back its lost glory. They should focus on who is best placed to lead the fight against endemic insecurity, corruption, income inequalities, unemployment and poor infrastructure. The people should judge their leaders by their actions and potential to lead them from current social and economic morass to greater heights of prosperity and affluence. If in doing so, certain gentlemen’s agreements have to be broken, so be it.