Kenyans have a duty to cheer Amina in the AU contest

The dictatorial Kanu regime gave patriotism a bad name, with its tendency to label any differing view subversive or treasonous.

Personal praise songs for the president were wrongly classified as “patriotic” and given copious amounts of airplay on the public broadcaster, while school pupils were made to recite a verse every morning pledging loyalty to the president and the Republic.

The partisan politics that replaced the Kanu tyranny, with the reintroduction of multiparty democracy in the 1990s, has only served to entrench our distorted view of patriotism and public display of it.

So in the streets of Nairobi, you are more likely to spot a supporter of the ruling party wearing the beaded national flag bracelet than his or her opposition counterpart.

For the record, revulsion of public display of patriotism or open defiance is not unique to Kenya.

Last year, a number of American National Football League players took to sitting or kneeling down during the national anthem to protest the police shooting of black men.

Supporters of the match-day campaigns started by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick saw them as an effective way of calling attention to the injustice and racism against black Americans.

What is rare are cases of citizens of one nation supporting the interests of another against their own.

I’ve yet to come across a Kenyan athletics fan rooting for an Ethiopian runner against his countryman, for example.

PETTY PARTY POLITICS

Even the perennial underdogs Harambee Stars somehow manage to fill the stadium against the Super Eagles of Nigeria. And once in the stadium, the various affiliations – club, tribe, county, race or gender – are immediately collapsed.

The wisdom of the football fan is that “we are always stronger together, regardless of our flaws”.

It is one of the many simple lessons from the terraces that the high-minded Kenyan elite, including politicians and civil society activists, should learn.

The tendency to take petty party politics or peer jealousies to the international stage every other time turns the country into a global laughing stock.

Internal feuding in the Kibaki-Raila grand coalition government over the ICC cases some time back earned Kenya the diplomatic joke tag.

But the political class and civil society clearly didn’t learn a thing, with similar fights resurfacing in Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed’s candidacy for the Africa Union (AU) Commission chairperson.

Of course, Ms Mohamed’s strong CV and aggressive lobbying make her a front runner for the position.

But if you only followed some twitter hashtags or read local newspaper columns you would think you are in Senegal or Botswana.

The authors of a recent smear campaign on social media chose to go so low as to drag her family and private life in mud.

For heaven’s sake, Ms Mohamed is the Kenyan candidate – not Jubilee, not Cord.

Writer is chief sub-editor, Business Daily. [email protected]. @otienootienoa