We live in a jungle where survival is for the richest

The problem with Kenya is that we trust the courts too much and use guns too infrequently. Amnesty International reported that between January and October last year, only 122 civilians were shot dead by the police.

Yet Chief Justice David Maraga says there are some 490,000 cases pending in court. Everybody knows that justice delayed is justice denied, so the police need to be handing it out instantly, like they did in Eastleigh last week.

That video, which is widely considered to be Kenyan police at their best, shows a plainclothes officer shooting several times at a young man lying on the ground. If the cops did more of this, there wouldn’t be a backlog of nearly half a million cases bothering the Judiciary.

This would free up judges to adjudicate on truly important matters, like which blogger has abused which CEO, and babysitting divorcing couples as they haggle over the ruins of their marriages.

SCUM OF THE EARTH

There is no need to tie up important judicial resources in prosecuting known criminals who will just be freed anyway. It wastes everybody’s time, consumes too much of our taxes for no good reason and only makes human rights activists who are paid by foreign donors happy.

The people whose deaths are captured on stealthily recorded videos have no families to grieve for them, they are not worthy of human dignity or a fair trial, they are the scum of the earth and deserve a dog’s death.

Clever people on social media like Dr Wandia Njoya will channel fake outrage, but we mustn’t listen to them.

“People were suspected of stealing billions from the public, but did they get summarily executed? No, they’re running for political office,” they will say.

They will make legitimate arguments like, “The poor are presumed to be guilty on suspicion” but we must ignore this desperate attempt to appeal to reason.

LIVE BY THE GUN, DIE BY THE GUN

Listen instead to those who see the point like my lawyer friend, Donald Kipkorir.

“When one decides to be a terrorist by joining al Shabaab or being a cattle rustler or a gangster, he operates outside of the law and cannot seek refuge in the law,” he wrote on Facebook.

He is an advocate of note who even represents me in a case and he says, “To be a lawyer and to support extra judicial Killings is not oxymoronic,” so it must be right.

Surely, all those people who support the killing of “hardcore criminals” can’t be wrong. Everyone knows that those who live by the gun must die by the gun and there is no point opening a discussion on a principle we all agree on.

“The fact that the public supports the execution and some were even cheering is a thorough indictment of the population’s lack of faith ... in the entire criminal justice system,” people like Amnesty East Africa Researcher Abdullahi Boru will say.

WESTERN STANDARDS

They will use their Western standards to say idealistic things like: “If the system worked, people would have trusted the security agencies to arrest, investigate and a verdict is given,” but that would never work in Kenya. The only way to deal with crime is as if this country were a jungle and survival is for the richest. It is the fault of those teenagers for stealing mobile phones and other petty items instead of becoming tenderpreneurs and stealing billions of shillings like good, ambitious Kenyans.

It is the Kenyan dream so much so that even  German writer Andrea Bohnstedt, has lived here long enough to understand us. “It’s practically de rigueur to steal millions/rape women after drugging them/impersonate police officers/you name it to run for political office,” she accurately responded to Dr Njoya’s post.

LEGAL PROTECTION

Forget people like Muciri Kiambo who are terming such executions as shortcuts for a wider problem.

“The problem with shortcuts is that we will never see the need to do things the right way. So the policeman who can shoot an unarmed person and claim that they were a thug will never see the need to build a case,” is a solid point but at least they get the job done anyway, right?

Building a case is hard for an ordinary policeman, especially once the accused hires some fancy lawyer with an expensive suit and a firm full of minions who can look for obscure precedents and other confusing ideas.

This is not a slippery slope as some pesky people are screaming at every corner. Nobody wants their case to drag in court for 20 years when a couple of gunshots could have done the job.

The police should be encouraged to shoot everyone they suspect and wrongdoers will soon get the idea. In fact, they should get legal protection so that they aren’t asked to take responsibility for being trigger-happy.

The rule of law never helped anybody, let us be the jungle we we’ve always wanted to be.

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BOOK SMART 

A good grade is not everything

MY PATERNAL grandmother, Francesca Madowo, is one of the smartest people I know yet she has never had a day of formal education.

Not only is she able to connect extremely complex dots and draw startlingly brilliant conclusions, she has the intelligence of three ordinary mortals and the humour of a stand-up comedian. If she wanted to run for a parliamentary or gubernatorial seat, she wouldn’t qualify because of that technicality. Yet she raised nine well-educated children, ran a home and is still generally winning at life in her eighties.

The obsession with Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho’s D- grade in Form 4 is silly, when you think about it. Similarly, it shouldn’t matter whether President Uhuru Kenyatta graduated from Amherst College.

The circumstances surrounding their education should matter more, especially if there are integrity issues to be raised that speak of their character but not the grade itself. Some people just don’t examine well but that doesn’t mean they are any dumber than the A students in that class. Even if they fail, some end up excelling in other areas of their lives that should more than compensate for academic shortcomings. Kenyans shouldn’t be so hung up on grades.

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SUPER SALE

We should Buy Kenya throughout the year

THE “BUY KENYA, Build Kenya Super Sale” at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre last week appears to have done so well that it is moving to other parts of the country.

A friend shared a denim trouser with H&M branding and another with a Lee logo, surprised that such major international labels were made in Kenya.

 The robust numbers during the sale days should be a sure sign that Kenyans are happy to buy local clothes if they are of high quality and fairly priced.

The mythical middle class is expanding and their disposable incomes growing.

All those garment industries that closed shop beyond the Export Processing Zones should be back in business.

Even without a ban, the second-hand clothes business will die if local alternatives thrive. If vehicle assembly plants can be revived or new ones set up, how much harder can this be?

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