When editors get captions on history wrong
What you need to know:
- Let me say this again. Only as an MP and a minister — not as a former MP and a former minister — did Mr Godia and Mr Otiende play leading roles in that ceremony. I reiterate that these two personages became former only when they ceased to occupy those positions, many years after they had made Old Jomo a Tiriki elder.
- In 2014, the term former minister can be appropriate to Mr Otiende only with regard to his activities in 2014 — only because he is no longer the (or a) minister. But, in 1964, when he was ushering in Mzee Kenyatta as a Tiriki elder, Mr Otiende was not a former minister. No, he was the minister for Education.
Our English-language reporters and sub-editors are like Vaska the Cat of Russian story-book. They “...listen but go on eating...” Although you have admonished them about a million times against a certain crime (of the tongue), they commit it again and again. Take the adjective “former”, about which I have written umpteen times right here.
Take the following caption on page 28 of the Nyanza-Western edition of The Standard of November 24, 2014: “Kenya’s First President Jomo Kenyatta, former Khamisi MP Stanley Godia ... and former Education Minister J. B. Otiende in 1964 when the President was made a Tiriki elder in the then Kakamega district...”
It is, in fact, a problem more of logic than of language. My dictionary defines the adjective former as “...belonging to or occurring in an earlier time...” or as “...having been (or existed) at a previous time...” That makes Messrs Godia and Otiende “former ministers” only with regard to the time the caption was written.
TIRIKI ELDER
But, with regard to 1964, when Messrs Godia and Otiende were making Mzee Kenyatta a Tiriki elder, they were, respectively, an MP and a minister. They had not yet become “former”. Indeed, it was only as such that they presided over that ritual. In short, They became former only when they ceased to be members of Mzee Kenyatta’s official system.
Let me say this again. Only as an MP and a minister — not as a former MP and a former minister — did Mr Godia and Mr Otiende play leading roles in that ceremony. I reiterate that these two personages became former only when they ceased to occupy those positions, many years after they had made Old Jomo a Tiriki elder.
Hence the question: If — in that caption — Mr Godia is a former MP and Mr Otiende a former minister, why isn’t Mzee Kenyatta a “former president”? If you insist that the term “Kenya’s First President” is the more pertinent one, then, in 1964 — less than a year after independence — Godia and Khamisi were probably also first-timers.
Godia was probably the first Khamisi MP and Otiende the first Education minister. The quest is for consistency. Yet the problem wouldn’t arise at all if our reporters and sub-editors were not so preoccupied with the adjective “former” for every event and every post in some past situation.
In 2014, the term former minister can be appropriate to Mr Otiende only with regard to his activities in 2014 — only because he is no longer the (or a) minister. But, in 1964, when he was ushering in Mzee Kenyatta as a Tiriki elder, Mr Otiende was not a former minister. No, he was the minister for Education.
That is why the caption must read something like the following: “President Jomo Kenyatta, Khamisi MP Stanley Godia ... and Education Minister J. B. Otiende ... when they made the President a Tiriki elder some time in 1964...” The question of “former” just does not arise because, in 1964, those were the real respective posts of those Kenyans.
