Disband the Kenya film classification agency

In the past couple of weeks, Ezekiel Mutua’s Kenya Film Classification Board has prepared “proposals” to control everything from stage plays to advertisements, including billboards and even impromptu public performances.

This is the latest in Mr Mutua’s assault on free speech and the communication industry in an effort to force all Kenyans to conform to his convoluted idea of national morality.

While the attempt was thwarted by hawk-eyed artists, Mr Mutua left the forum threatening to “implement the Act as it is”, a veiled threat of continued oppression.

One can understand the restlessness of a national Board created solely for the purpose of classifying movies and shows based on their content in a fast-changing world where an increasing proportion of the entertainment industry is enjoyed on the go rather than in a stationary location.

Clips and movies are streamed onto mobile devices and go viral before any regulator is even aware of the content. By the time the likes of Mutua get to watching the clips and “banning” them or classifying them and threatening the nebulous producers, the entire world has moved on to newer thrills.

This Board was initially formed to censor local productions in order to ensure that they conform to the colonial idea of morality and the politics of the day.

Unfortunately the morality and politics of the day held that the African was an inferior creature without the ability to create productions requiring “higher order thinking”, and who needed a tight leash lest he regresses to “wild, primitive” behaviour.

Any production involving a dissection of the politics of the day was also considered subversive, since the African creature was not expected to possess the ability to engage in discussions about governance and rights.

NEGOTIATING FREEDOM

This mentality was inherited by the so-called “founding fathers” of this nation after their stints in Western capitals purportedly negotiating freedom and self-governance for the natives.

Naturally, upon gaining self-governance, the new African rulers perfected the colonial methods of repression, engineering the transfer of whatever property they could from any of the departing wazungu into their own hands.

They did all this at high noon, with the citizens watching and purportedly applauding the “Africanisation” of the colonial edifice.

This would naturally engender some resentment at least in the minds of a few who felt betrayed by the new power gang.

Thespians and writers from the sixties and early seventies documented the disappointment of the masses and the rising sense that another revolution might be necessary to dethrone the home-guards that had subverted the will of the people and made every citizen their servant.

The powers-that-be at the time did not take long to notice the darkening moods across the land, and in seeking an instrument to forestall the inevitable uprising, they serendipitously “stumbled upon” colonial pieces of legislation that could be put to good use.

Soon, intellectuals and writers were either running for their lives into exile, or rotting in detention.

Those using the colonial legislation and morality could not avoid the temptation to couch their language in the same colonial terms, claiming the laws were made “for the greater good of the nation”.

They were meant to block these vexatious intellectuals and artists from offending some Victorian national values that actually remained a mystery to all but those implementing the laws.

Thus the citizens were prohibited from public displays of immoral behaviour, which behaviour could only be assessed by those in authority at the time.

The activities of these thought police peaked during the Kanu kleptocracy, during which nothing bad could be said of the government without looking over one’s shoulder. We do not need a film classification agency that arrogates itself the role of the moral police.

Atwoli is associate professor of psychiatry and dean, School of Medicine, Moi University; [email protected]