It was thoughtless to frustrate Raila at airport lounge

I shudder at the thought that a future regime may eject Jaduong’ Mwai Kibaki or Jaduong’ Moody Awori from our VIP facilities merely because they no longer hold high state offices.

The Luo honorific jaduong’ is highly illustrative of my point. The adjective duong’ refers primarily to physical size and chronological age – the two things into which we all grow after birth.
But chronological age also confers knowledge, memory, wisdom and, in many cases, power, authority and respect.

In tradition, I think, this is true of all African communities – indeed, of all human peoples at the gentile level of socio-economic formation. I am told that the Kikuyu word munene and the Kiswahili word mkubwa have the same semantic career and social significance.

What’s more, unless he commits a sacrilegious act, a man who acquired such a title of power, authority and respect retained that title even after he left office (including through death).

That is why human societies raise monuments to their warriors, liberators, magi of knowledge and technique and other heroes of yore.

That is why we, in Kenya, have mounted statues to commemorate Dedan Kimathi, Jomo Kenyatta and Tom Mboya and should mount them for our other heroes and heroines of the struggle to defeat British imperialism in Kenya.

By the same token, whenever a person is in authority – notwithstanding his body size and chronological age – all gentile communities traditionally bowed in front of him as munene, mkubwa, jaduong’, ruoth, omwami, suchlike.

That is why – although Uhuru Kenyatta is spindly in body and more than two decades my junior – I have no problem recognising him as Jaduong’ Maduong’ (“paramount chief”).

Although I have frequently criticised his activities, I have no problem thinking of him as my elder brother – in social status – and thus giving him every due that I owe him as such. On the other hand, against the resources we fritter away in useless “projects”, privileged treatment of individuals who have vitally served this country in all fields costs virtually nothing.

This mutual service respect – from the younger generation to the older and from the older to the younger – was what Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto themselves promised this country when they campaigned on the platform of youth taking over from Mr Kibaki’s gerontocrats.

It was thus that Mwalimu Julius Nyerere introduced the expressive Zanaki word ng’atuka into Kiswahili.

Kung’atuka is to progressively retire from active leadership in favour of more energetic blood and more idealistic brain. Those who ng’atuka continue to serve vital roles through avuncular sanction, through caution, through tuition.

That is why the generation which takes over cannot afford to treat its immediate predecessors as ignominiously as we have just treated our former Prime Minister.

A wise management group cannot subject its Kalonzos, Musalias and their opposite numbers in other walks of life to the embarrassment Mr Odinga suffered this last week. If the urge is merely to wreak revenge upon your election rivals, then it is astonishingly thoughtless and childish.

First, you succeed merely in undermining the same government in the international public’s eyes.

Secondly, you are playing the pro-Odinga-Musyoka communities against the government. By mistreating their perceived leader(s), you are making them feel that Uhuru Kenyatta is not their President. You are suggesting to them to withdraw their cooperation and support.

Uhuru Kenyatta’s government also requires the entire world’s goodwill. But this week we received headlines the world over which depict our MPs as Maneaters of Tsavo and our State House as bent on wreaking revenge upon its election rivals.

That kind of headline can only undermine the very government you think you are helping by your juvenile behaviour. That is why Uhuru needs to punish those responsible for this juvenile disorder.

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