We are in trouble and we owe Kenya the duty of making it better than we found it
What you need to know:
- My call for national dialogue has not had a better argument in its favour than yours. Yet you curiously insist that we need not talk about it.
- One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is to assume that everyone has a price and everyone is ready to be bought.
Dear Mr Ngwiri,
On June 28, you wrote to me an open letter. I wish to assure you that I did read it. I respect your opinions and I respond to the issues you raised.
Firstly, I do not think I am engaging in anything extra-ordinary in calling for national dialogue on the problems that Kenya faces today. Neither am I doing anything novel when I agitate for a fair and just society for all Kenyans.
Making ours a better nation than we found and lived in it is a duty that we all owe this country. I am sure it is what keeps you in journalism. It is what keeps me in politics. Media practitioners hardly agree on anything. But politicians and media practitioners share a belief they can make societies better.
On my part, I am here today fighting for the rights of Kenyans and raising the same issues I would raise even if I were the President. I did this during past regimes, including during the grand coalition government in which I was a co-principal and Prime Minister.
And yes, my ambitions are not satisfied and shall never be satisfied so long as the struggle to obtain a fair and just society for all Kenyans remains unfulfilled.
The realities that Kenya faces today underline the importance of the issues I am raising. You did in your letter concede that “we, as a country, are in deep trouble” and you laid out quite succinctly how Kenya is on the way down.
You said we need solutions, but apparently only so long as they are not coming from me. You seem to prefer that Kenya continues to go under rather than consider anything I have been saying. You cynically ask; “in any case, except for the terrorists’ attacks, what else is new in Kenya?”
This is a very callous position to take when you have earlier written that “insecurity has gone out of control”; that “our security and intelligence organs appear to be overwhelmed.”
On corruption, you say “we seem to have lost the plot”, and that “negative ethnicity has been corroding our very soul as a nation”.
CLOSE TO 100 YEARS
My call for national dialogue has not had a better argument in its favour than yours. Yet you curiously insist that we need not talk about it. Neither do you want Kenyans to use mass action to force the government to talk.
I am sure you know that some of the greatest achievements in modern democracies have been obtained through mass action.
You will remember how, in the 1960s, African-American leaders organised “The Great March on Washington” and successfully conveyed to Congress the importance of passing the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
You will also remember how in the 1970s, mass action was organised in American cities to successfully force the government to end the disastrous war in Vietnam.
Societies do better when the media are objective observers of events and honest interpreters of history.
One of the issues being continuously raised regarding our call for mass action is that it is alien to Kenya’s democratic culture. The media and politicians are saying that mass action was introduced in 1991 to advocate for the removal of section 2(a) and is irrelevant today.
In truth, mass action is the oldest democratic practice in Kenya, having been introduced by Harry Thuku in the 1920s.
So, even before there was Dedan Kimathi, there was Harry Thuku with mass action. Mass action has close to 100 years tradition in Kenya. And now it is considered a fundamental right.
The constitutional rights we fought for are not empty statements in a dead document. They are real and intended to be exercised freely. In Kenya, we must learn to accept mass action as a legitimate exercise of the people’s right to demonstrate and petition government.
Let me end by answering three questions you raised in the tail-end of your open letter.
IMPROBABLE HYPOTHESIS
The first regards why I have raised the issue of national dialogue now and not earlier. You will agree that Cord gave so much time to Jubilee to get its act together that it started suffering a loss of confidence.
The call for dialogue could not have been earlier because every new government needs time to settle down. It cannot also be later because, as you say, “we, as a country, are in deep trouble”.
Your second question regards the mobilisation of rally attendants. You suggest that attendants are being “bussed” from one rally to another. I will ask you to calculate the sitting capacity of one bus, divide by it the number of attendants of a well-organised rally, and see how improbable your hypothesis is.
One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is to assume that everyone has a price and everyone is ready to be bought. The sooner we learn that there are millions of Kenyans willing to give themselves freely to the service of their nation, the better we will be as a country.
Your third question is about statements made by some of my political allies, which you say undermine the Constitution.
When it comes to freedom of expression, I am much in the same position as you. When you edit the opinion pages of the Nation, you do not censor the writers. Neither do you blacklist them.
But the fact that they speak from your platform does, of course, put a lot of pressure on you, and I am certain you have often been accused of abetting many an unpopular opinion.
But the nature of your position, and that of democracy, is that you cannot act like a “thought policeman”. Neither can I.
Mr Odinga is the leader of the Orange Democratic Movement and co-principal of the Cord Alliance.
