Film and plays law a throwback to the Nyayo House days

Mr Ezekiel Mutua, the Kenya Film Classification Board chief executive at a past press briefing at the regulator’s offices. PHOTO | LILIAN OCHIENG

What you need to know:

  • Plays, especially, have been the refuge of the licentious, who keep hiding lewd scenes and expressions in drama.
  • Plays must henceforth be classified as suitable for general exhibition, unsuitable for persons under the age of 18 or restricted, meaning that they cannot be shown in public.
  • Police, according to the proposed law, can intervene to stop the making of any scene, which endangers the safety of any person or property or is cruel to an animal.

Famed Italian playwright, actor and producer Dario Fo died this week. It was the likes of his The Accidental Death of an Anarchist and Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay, as well as Egyptian Tawfiq al-Hakim’s Fate of a Cockroach and Nigerian Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Transistor Radio that kept the government censor, a semi-literate official on the 20th floor of Nyayo House, Nairobi, in business for much of the 1980s and 1990s.

Kenyan actor Steenie Njoroge went to that office in 1992 for a licence to stage Wole Soyinka’s A Play of the Giants, a satirical caricature of African leaders like Idi Amin, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, and Mobutu Sese Seko at the United Nations in New York and left his national identity card as a guarantee for supplying a copy of the play.

He has never gone back for his identity card, seeing as Soyinka’s play was not the type of correct public display the administration was interested in.

Just as well if he thought he had escaped without filing a copy of the script, because there is a new sheriff in town. After lawyer Stephen Mwenesi filed suit on behalf of Rahimtulla Players in 1997, the High Court found that there was no basis to issue licences for the performance of plays, and thus opened the way for the use of theatre for civic education ahead of the constitutional review.

Now, a draft Films and Stage Plays Act, put forth by the Kenya Film Classification Board corrects that error of the past. Kenya is sinking in the swamps of immorality, and God has spoken directly to Ezekiel Mutua, chief executive officer of the KFCB, commanding him to swallow a scroll and restore morality to the republic.

Films, plays, advertisements and posters have been the refuge of the moral scoundrel and the social pervert. Many objectionable works comprising two or more distinct parts depicting sex are being seen everywhere.

DEAL WITH HORROR

Others express or deal with horror, crime, cruelty, violence or the consumption of drugs. Yet others deal with intoxicating substances in a manner that does grave injury to the public good.

These materials constantly deprave and corrupt persons who are likely to come into contact with them, without regard to their ages.

Plays, especially, have been the refuge of the licentious, who keep hiding lewd scenes and expressions in drama. They must henceforth be classified as suitable for general exhibition, unsuitable for persons under the age of 18 or restricted, meaning that they cannot be shown in public.

Henceforth, a full description of the scenes in a film, and the full text of the spoken parts, plus a translation thereof into English, must reach Mr Mutua before any of it can be allowed to be shot.

Police, according to the proposed law, can intervene to stop the making of any scene, which endangers the safety of any person or property or is cruel to an animal.

Any publication that describes, depicts or otherwise deals with acts of torture, the infliction of serious physical harm, sexual conduct or violence or coercion in association with sexual conduct; exploits the nudity of persons or children or both; promotes or encourages criminal acts or acts of terrorism; represents, directly or indirectly, that members of any particular community or group are inherently inferior to other members of the public should be restricted and unavailable for public consumption.

Similarly, Internet Service Providers must ensure that their customers do not distribute pornography, radicalisation materials, and hate speech or glamorise the use of drugs and alcohol; that they do not use the Internet to deal with matters of race, ethnicity, political affiliation or religion in such a manner that causes feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility between different racial, ethnic, political or religious groups.

This is the new era of morality in Kenya, and the waiting is nail-biting.