Let us rethink issue of releasing TJRC report for debate

The Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission was set up in 2008 with the ostensible objective of promoting “peace, justice, national unity, healing and reconciliation”, after the cataclysmic events of the post-election violence. Eight years later, it is not clear why anybody bothered. And it is not clear either why anybody would bother to revive the debate today.

For the record, the TJRC did a commendable job receiving, sifting and collating evidence, visiting every corner of the republic, and finally coming up with a 2,210-page report. But it appears that some of the findings trod on some very sensitive toes. Others never stood a chance of being implemented. The reason for this last is, in my view, quite simple: The TJRC’s mandate was too wide and all-encompassing.

Those calling loudly for the implementation of the TJRC report should explain, for instance, how they would go about addressing the so-called historical injustices, especially those relating to land, short of summary expropriation. Talk, when you are not on the hot seat, can be very cheap. How do you, for instance, compensate the Mijikenda for the land stolen from them by colonialists a century ago?

Had the TJRC stuck to the immediate causes of the 2007/2008 post-election violence, perhaps something could have been sorted out. But harking back to all the atrocities and abuses committed by post-Independence governments seems to be misadvised. Past massacres of the Wagalla kind, however regrettable, suffer from one deficiency; the evidence that would have nailed the guilty is already cold.

Unsolved assassinations of popular politicians like Tom Mboya, JM Kariuki and Robert Ouko, however traumatising they were, will remain just that: unsolved. All evidence has been erased and no truth commission will ever make any difference.

DUMBFOUNDING RECOMMENDATION

But to many observers, the most dumbfounding recommendation is that relating to reconciliation. After the post-election violence, for instance, it would not have been possible for anyone to come up and admit slaughtering his neighbours in cold blood and seek forgiveness. Yet that seems to be what the TJRC had in mind. In a situation where the evidence has gone cold, such momentous feats of self-sacrifice remain unthinkable.

There was always a feeling that the TJRC was never expected to succeed. Very few people, especially those in power, ever wanted that particular Pandora’s Box opened, and the whole concept of a truth commission was probably meant to buy time and cool down tensions.

Let us rethink this issue of releasing the TJRC report for debate for to do so may turn out to be an exercise in futility. In any case, the timing would be absolutely wrong; with the next elections, tensions have again started building up, and the proposed cure may turn out to be worse than the disease.

***

The largest freshwater body in Africa which is the second largest in the world, Lake Victoria, is dying, choked by raw sewage, domestic and industrial waste, and the invasive water hyacinth. The predatory Nile perch has also contributed massively to the lake’s degradation. Lake Naivasha has been severely degraded in the past 30 years due to unchecked surface and underground abstraction by flower and horticulture firms.

Voi River, it has been reported, is on its death-bed due to unregulated sand-harvesting which has rendered the residents of Voi town and its environs quite vulnerable. And in the semi-arid Makueni, the same nefarious activity is wreaking havoc on rivers.

These are not the only natural resources under threat. It would appear the whole country is on an environmental devastation spree and very few people give a hoot. What will happen when we destroy all our water sources? What kind of country shall we bequeath future generations if this unbridled greed continues?

We don’t need to be told that there can never be sustainable development if we allow our country to turn into one vast desert. This issue must be taken very seriously indeed.

[email protected]