The Second Republic a dividend for dissidents

In 1982 when the Kanu regime under the presidency of Daniel arap Moi decided to make Kenya a one-party state by law, the late Mukaru Ng’ang’a, then a lecturer in history at the University of Nairobi, commented that imposing authoritarian rule on Kenyans by fiat would only drive opposition underground; and the opposition would even be more dangerous.

Mukaru was immediately detained without trial, and he was eventually released several years later in very poor health. Attempts to save his life in Sweden did not succeed. That is why we now refer to him in the past tense as the late Mukaru Ng’ang’a.

But what Mukaru had warned about occurred hardly six months after he had uttered those prophetic words: the attempted coup of August 1982 claimed the lives of many Kenyans, led to the disbandment of the Kenya Air Force and many were detained or jailed for years.

In the meantime the regime became even more intolerant and repressive, throwing many dissidents into detention, a good number escaped into exile while others died or mysteriously disappeared.

When I visited Mukaru in Sweden as he was languishing in the hospital, he was in jubilant spirits notwithstanding his poor health. He jokingly told me that one of these days “we shall be in one of the best governments Kenya has had since Independence!”

He urged those of us at home to soldier on; never give in to Moi. We never did, whether at home or in exile abroad. And that is why we are here today; tall and proud that a new Kenya is being born with our aspirations engrained in the Constitution of the Second Republic.

Mukaru is not with us to-day, and neither are many others like Titus Andungosi and Patrick Onyango Sumba, but President Kibaki will today sign into law a constitution that relegates detention without trial and political exile to the dustbin of our ignominious history under presidential authoritarian rule.

The president will no longer be that feared monster whose edicts Kenyans loathed to listen to at one o’clock sacking people left right and centre and promoting incompetent cronies to the citadels of state power.

There is no doubt that the checks and balances that we always wanted in government are enshrined in this Constitution ushering in the Second Republic. Kenya is now home to a fundamental law of the land where individual as well as people’s rights are respected and promoted by the Bill of Rights.

This Bill of Rights, described by many as one of the best in the world, follows in the footsteps of the South African one that was promulgated at the demise of apartheid, one of the most heinous contraptions of exercising political power and enjoying economic privileges by one race over others!

The Kenyan ruling elite, during the Moi era were no doubt as contemptuous of intellectuals and the masses as were those who wielded state power in apartheid South Africa. It is not surprising that when the popular masses had their say through the voice of progressive social forces, the product was very profound Bills of Rights in both South Africa and Kenya.

We are proud of the Committee of Experts which listened to the one million voices of ordinary Kenyans yearning for good governance and a national democratic and developmental state.

Catalyst for growth

In 1988 when Brazil also broke from the past by enacting a new democratic constitution, the huge Latin American nation opened the door to rapid economic and social progress. Brazil now plays in the league of the few industrialised nations outside the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

And this it did within two decades. Kenya too can do it beginning by exploiting the locked potential in the 47 counties that will now see local entrepreneurial initiatives enabled by a political system that cannot be stifled easily by central authority.

The Constitution of the Second Republic is not of the same hue as the independence constitution of 1963 which came with regional governments that could easily be broken by the centralising tendencies of the early nationalists.

This time there are profound constitutional safeguards that guarantee the existence of regional governments within the counties. To make them financially viable the state will allocate them 15 per cent of the national budget, not to mention the equalisation funds, the Constituency Development Fund (two and one half per cent of the national budget) and Local Authority Transfer Fund which may have to be renamed in line with the changing times.

Changing this constitutional architecture will not be as whimsical as it was under the authoritarian regimes of yester years.
The so-called dissidents were always in a minority during the last 40 years of Kenyans resistance to authoritarian rule.