Today, I will be a peace ambassador for Kenya. However, to get to this peace, you must first endure this wading through the rot
of a national wound too long in suppuration. No shortcuts. It's real peace you want, isn't it? Let's get to it then.
The rot is not with the
people; it's systemic. It is solidly institutionalized so that anyone who gains
access to power can choose to use it. The Kenyan power system is like a kitchen
with a sewage system that spews out its filth into the pipes that are
controlled by politicians so that the food cooked in it poisons all its
consumers.
The rot is a glut of
selfishness, insatiable greed, impunity and a deep dark fear that there will
never be enough for everyone. It suppresses human kindness and makes for a
perfect mushrooming of endless schemes against the weaker person.
The rot is not erased by footprints
of bold infrastructure that earn us the middle-income country label, because
right beneath all the brick and mortar are mounds of humanity wiggling like maggots
on a carcass of poverty.
The rot is resilient,
stamped into the country’s fractured birthing, and spews out constantly to poison
and deny millions peace of mind. In the past few days, this rot broke its
banks, and time will tell how many victims will drown before the flood is
contained.
No matter how piously you
pray, nothing will change until you act, and you will always suffer the effects
of the rot, regardless of what ethnicity or social class you belong to. Some are staggering in drunken celebration for your candidate’s declared victory,
yet you retire to this rot that welcomes you every night with its empty stench.
Silently, you cry your tears of destitution and wait for tomorrow when you can
vomit the poison in your heart onto another’s shoes. Perchance, that should
give you some twisted relieve.
Some are calling
for peace because you’ve got fortunes to protect, comforts you worked very
hard for. But you know, as long as your fortunes can shift in a second, as long
as you're easily the victim of robbery, carjacking and hospital strikes, as
long as you feel you have to hide your houses behind prison-like barricades, as
long as you pretend not to see the multitudes that stream in and out of
neighboring slums daily, as long as you know an elections official and an
innocent Kenyan got slaughtered in cold blood just before you voted and you
don't care, you're infected by the rot.
I beg that you do not
insult my intelligence by telling me that the "peace" I see so many
struggling Kenyans waking up to is worth thanking God for. It is not peace; it
is prolonged inner turmoil, a constant state of need, a place of squalid
agitation, a position of indignity and beggartude, a condition of
powerlessness, all of it too often bandaged with the balm of Kenyan humor and
the opium of religiosity.
In order to get to peace,
we must change this rotten system, and we can do it in three ways:
1) Accepting the results
that a rotten system spews out and hope that we will forget the injustice;
2) Use the institutional
tools available - courts, civil society and movements - to change the system;
3) A civil war.
In 1861, a divided
America chose #3, a bloody war which ended that country’s rotten system of
slavery from which many benefited. After the war, a new united nation emerged.
It cost them over 600,000 lives.
Kenya cannot choose this
option, not because it cannot afford the blood sacrifice, but because it may
not survive the aftermath. Not without the kind of leader who will inspire a
million Kenyans to take up that valiant "give me freedom or give me
death" option. Many a powerful and prosperous nation have been founded on
#3. I mention this NOT to
justify war but as an objective observation of history.
Kenya should not choose
#3 unless it can identity a leader who can steer a country from a bloodbath and
onto a new united identity. The US had Abraham Lincoln. Rwanda discovered Paul
Kagame after a slaughter that cost the country over 800,000 lives. Both leaders
shaped a better nation in the aftermath of conflict that forced them to deal
with the depths of their national decay.
Kenya should not choose
#3 until it has exhausted all diplomatic and nonviolent options, and because we’re
a wiser and smarter world that knows the cost of war is too great. It is
practically impossible to exhaust diplomatic options as long as we’re willing
to do the hard work. But diplomacy must never again be compromises that simply sooth
the egos of political opponents in power-sharing deals that ignore the gaping
national wound of forgotten injustices.
In 2007 and 2013, Kenya
chose #1, and it must not become the case again. It's the wrong choice. It only
allows the rot to increase and provides the next power center with a decayed
system with which to poison their opponents. There is nothing smart about
accept-and-move-on; it's only fear and suppression of justified anger.
That leaves #2, which is
the best option. Kenya still has a capacity for powerful movements, a history
of people-driven transformations. The Second Liberation that ended the era of
dictatorship, the Orange movement that ushered in a new constitution. We need a
revolution with twice the combined potency of those two movements. A Velvet
Revolution solution is what is needed to rid the country of its institutionalized
gangrene. No, Kenyans, revolution is NOT a dirty word. It's a dance against systemic rot and brutality. It might cost you life and limb. After the dance comes peace.
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| "Dancers and the Dictator", by Wissam Al Jazairy |
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