Why Kenya should not have signed the Rome Treaties

RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING, I was very unhappy that Kenya had signed the Rome treaty that seemed to reverse our independence into a corner controlled by the imperialists.

The ICC may have its benefits, but very often, very sweet things have tragic coatings, just like from sex you sometimes end up with gonorrhoea.

Had the ICC been an African union outfit, I would not have minded. Despite our institutional weakness – including our judicial weakness – the only way to strengthen them is to reform them, and to get on with them.

We cannot claim to be independent while we keep running back to the imperialists for help.

For the last one full year, Luis Moreno-Ocampo’s mythology has dominated our news and discourse. His alleged power and sagacity have turned him into an ethereal colossus. But as a lawyer he is no better than our Amos Wako, or our indomitable Gitobu Imanyara.

AND NOW THAT OCAMPO HAS VISITED us and gone, let us instruct our Attorney-General to write to him a polite letter instructing him not to return.

I also sincerely believe that we cannot run our governance through armed conflict. All those who organised and funded the post-election violence must be heavily punished. An eye for an eye still remains good retribution. But we do not need Moreno-Ocampo to try our criminals.

Let us set up one side of our High Court, chaired by Charles Njonjo, to try these felonious vagabonds.

I agree with Egyptian Ambassador to Kenya, Mr Saher Hamzer, who advised that the perpetrators of the mayhem be tried at home, because ‘‘Kenya is capable of solving its own problems.”

Unfortunately there are still many people in Kenya who nostalgically yearn for European things, and would prefer if our problems were sorted out by Europeans. I am not preaching anti-Westernism. I have many, many, British and American friends. But that is a different issue. We must separate personal interests from state interests.

Indeed, soon after independence, Jomo Kenyatta taught us to “forget and forgive” the imperialists, and to get on with building a strong and independent republic, and that is why retired President Moi is clear that it was a mistake to have involved the ICC participation in our national predicament.

Now and again, in the past, we had workshops on “The Kenya We Want.” Part of the answer to that need is being tackled by the various reform commissions we have appointed.

What, however, is disturbing is the death of the nationalist fervour that we all shared.

Being strongly Kenyan does not stop us from being internationalist. But it helps us together to take binding and brotherly decisions. It also helps us at crucial moments, to put our class and ethnic differences aside in order to tackle national problems together.

As a nation, we must genuinely begin to isolate those who keep championing tribalist interests. There are those selfish leaders who thrive on tribalism, but whose electors do not get any better economically.

At the end of the day, it was tribalist rhetoric and bigotry that fanned the post-election conflict. Mzee Kenyatta and Mr Moi had many weaknesses, but in all their political rallies, they always preached nationalist aspirations.

These days, we only hear of ethnic alliances. Now, if two or three Kenyan tribes sign an alliance pact, what it means is that they have no interest in the remaining 40 Kenyan tribes. Is that the best way to build a sound republic?

BUT LET ME NOT STRAY. WE WERE talking about the ICC and Moreno-Ocampo and let me plead that we keep the two phenomena out. More importantly, we have other issues to debate rather than wasting time on Ocampo, Ocampo and Ocampo.

I would, for example, love to hear more discussion on East African integration, on the type of universities that are emerging in Kenya, on the historic neglect of the intellectuals by the successive Kenyan governments, on whether it is necessary to build a second sea port at Lamu, on our relations with China, on the rise and fall of Europe, and so on.

We are a great nation, but our minds are clogged by the short-circuited minds of our politicians.

Prof Ochieng’ teaches History at Maseno University