Rude tribal and racial words have no place in society

Integrity, development and happiness are among the first human interests to which a national daily newspaper must respond adequately both in its selection and treatment of news and features and through its editorials and other commentaries.

Yet in Kenya, quite often, that appears to be an irreconcilable contradiction.

That was why the Daily Nation of April 19 did well to put on page one – under a colour headline to boot – a story about President Uhuru Kenyatta calling on Kenya’s voters to avoid violence, especially in the period before the coming national polls. As “news”, I reiterate, there was absolutely no sales value in that story.

Nobody was going to rush for a copy of the newspaper as a result of that headline.

Indeed, only a sense of national responsibility could have urged somebody in the newsroom to demand that such a story be carried on page one.

ETHNICALLY VOLATILE

In a word, in an ethnically volatile country like ours, a newspaper must always weigh between its commercial interests and its national duty.

In the last analysis – in other words – the two interests are just one. For only in a peaceful country can any commercial venture hope to make money commercially.

Indeed, long-term peace itself is possible only in a materially responsible system. Most of Kenya’s newspaper readers can remember the national tragedy that befell us a few years ago as a result of controverted elections.

That is why, throughout the coming pre-election period, all Kenyans will be called upon to conduct themselves only in a manner that conduces to ethnic, national, sectarian, racial camaraderie, gender integrity, long-lasting peace and unhindered development. You will enjoy the constitutional freedom to vote for the candidate of your choice.

But, of the two options open to you – the other one being lawlessness of the kind in which hundreds of Kenyans poured profuse blood so needlessly in inter-ethnic skirmishing 10 years ago – assured peace is the only system known that can promote our country to its ideal goal – that destination, namely, in which wealth, both material and mental, is sure to abound for all Kenyans.

CONTRADICTIONS EXIST

To be quite sure, there will remain among us, being human, such differences as age-group, ethnic, gender, racial and confessional.

But the nature of the human animal is such that such contradictions exist in all other national entities throughout the human world. The difference lies only in the manner in which each national entity tries to solve its contradictions of that kind.

If – as an ethnic group – your leaders try to secure for you only your narrowest and most subjective ethnic desires and only by means of abusive words against other communities or only by means of arrows and spears, you will have helped to create a country in which inter-ethnic contradictions, inter-ethnic skirmishing and inter-ethnic bloodshed are the order of the day.

But there is no guarantee that the consequences will be all golden and that you yourself – the culprit – will enjoy all the material benefits that such an event might have been designed to produce.

That is why the fight against such narrownesses of the mind as “genderism”, racism, sectarianism, tribalism and “ageism” must be more mental than physical.

In a word, as mothers, fathers, ayahs and such other guardians, we are duty-bound to train the brains and hands of all our wards towards life-long respect for all human beings of all cultures and all physical outlooks.

In that struggle, in a word, the only weapon that can prove useful to humanity collectively is mental maturity as measured by the manner in which we face one another as ethnic and racial groups whenever such contradictions reach a critical point.

In Kenya, we have faced such inter-ethnic crises so often that we should, by now, know how to go about them without throwing rude tribal and racial words at one another.

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