If Parliament can’t keep peace, can the rest of us?

The ugly fights in Parliament brought our joyful Christmas mood to a standstill. "Come on! Parliamentarians all over the world fight, that's part of the game," a friend of mine said. 

But Kenya is not the rest of the world, and fights in Parliament are truly a worrying sign and simply not acceptable.

Kenya is not Western in this sense, and any attempt to imitate rogue parliaments will backfire on us. Modern Western lifestyle is quite individualistic. That’s the way it is conceived and their planning, execution and governance philosophy is person-centred.

This is not necessarily better or worse, but different. Modern philosophy and structures in the Western world follow deeply individualistic principles, where the community are on a secondary, or even tertiary plane.

Any African who has lived or travelled long enough through high-speed modern Western cities comes face to face with a culture shock, the shock of being on your own.

In the West, families are nuclear. Father, mother, brother, sister and cousin are strictly determined and there are no others. All the relationships are objectively determined by degrees of consanguinity. Aunties are just aunties and not mothers, and cousins are not brothers, no way!

TWO TERRYS

Recently, I have interacted with two Terrys who are not alike. At first sight they may seem like miles apart. One is 28, the other 82. One is black, the other white. One is writing a PhD thesis while the other is a seasoned, famous professor. One is a woman, the other a man.

But both are Kenyan by birth, and they are both deeply interested in financial inclusion. The younger Terry has been surrounded by some sort of inclusion since birth. She was brought up by parents, aunties, grandparents and cousins.

Her European husband is coming to terms with the fact that he married a woman with a family the size of a village. He never knew how many in-laws, including mothers-in-law, he would have to deal with. What a culture shock!

Every adult in an African village has enough authority to beat the hell out of any mischievous child, for in Africa you are never alone. You are for the community, from the community and in the community.

Exile and ostracism was perhaps the greatest punishment and torture possible. Exile was moral death, rejection. It was the annihilation of an essential part of one’s being, and it eventually led to physical death, coming at the hands of the enemy or merciless animals.

TRUE HARAMBEE SPIRIT

Cooperatives in Kenya handle large amounts of money. While some cooperatives are amazingly well-managed, others are close to disaster. In either case, success is based on trust, and failure is due to loss of trust.

Members of a cooperative society know each other, and defaulters have nowhere to hide. In cooperative societies trust has no price. It is essential.

Cooperatives embrace the true harambee spirit, a spirit that was corrupted when a price tag was placed on it. This price tag turned harambees into useful ways of bribing voters, and in many instances, into a coercive force to bring together people who had nothing or little in common and who were not interested in coming together.

In the true harambee spirit, all in the community came together for the common good. Personal accumulation of wealth made no real sense. Everything in the end was pointing to the good of the community.

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

In 1962, just before independence, the government made a comprehensive study on employment rates in Nairobi. The government wanted accurate data, to know what policies it should put in place.

Everyone was shocked to discover that Nairobi had an unemployment rate of 32 per cent, yet there were no beggars, no public kitchens or people sleeping in the streets.

Where were they? What was the reason behind this mindboggling fact? It was the community. Any unemployed Kenyan in Nairobi had a relative, and so he had somewhere to stay, to feed and to be looked after.

This was true social care, authentic social security. There was a deep sense of community. The community was the greatest insurer. Social insurance was a natural concept, for everyone in society had dignity.

Everyone was cared for, whether mentally handicapped, frail or old. Everyone had a place. Nobody had to be the fittest to survive and no one was on his or her own.

A community was all that was needed, and this gave everyone a sense of belonging, a purpose for being, and hope for living.

CREEP OF GREED

The advent of colonisation brought into play a number of good things and material developments which are undeniable. But it also brought Western systems and structures which were designed for a different setting and a different people.

These systems relegated communal sense to second place. The focus shifted from the community to the person. Self-realisation became achievable without the community.

This eroded the idea of communal insurance and inverted the equation from insurance to personal accumulation.

In traditional communities there were no poor. Some had more than others, but they also had more responsibility for the community; they had to care for more people.

A friend of mine told me a revealing story. In the 80s, a foreign official had paid him a courtesy call at the Treasury. The visitor was complaining about the high salaries Kenyan public servants were being paid. My friend did not say anything but stood up and took his visitor to the office next door.

He knocked and opened the door. He asked his neighbour, the then Assistant Minister of Finance, “How many people depend on or live from your salary?” “At least fifty”, the assistant minister said. The visitor understood and stopped complaining.

Back then “my salary” was not “mine”. My progress was not mine. As a matter of fact, most of my colleagues have been brought up and educated by people who were not their parents, and often were not even related.

This was the true harambee spirit that we destroyed when a price tag was placed on everything we do for others, and now everything has to be paid for.

In a society where nothing had to be foreseen, where no insurance was needed, where retirement pensions were unknown, we have suddenly found ourselves alone.

POLITICAL GLUTTONY

Financial pressure coupled with deficient checks, balances and rampant judicial impunity leads to the progressive disintegration of communal fabric.

A sense of guilt envelops a person into an excessive and obsessive accumulation of personal wealth in a desperate attempt to keep external communal traditions which are now more hypocritical than real.

The creeping of this personal greed has thrown the socio-political African balance off course. Greed has affected politics deeply.

Communities feel and vibrate with their representative in a manner the West cannot easily understand. Every parliamentarian is a reflection of his or her community.

This is why it was so important for every community to be represented, not only in Parliament, but also in Cabinet, and in every possible structure of power. This is also why personal merit has taken a backseat.

Anything happening in Parliament may easily be replicated in the streets. Parliamentary punches and aggression are disgusting, a sign of immaturity and poverty of language. Even worse, they are not just fights and punches of a few headless men and tomboys.

Violent, irresponsible and short-sighted behaviour shows an absolute misunderstanding of the delicate balance a parliament plays in a multi-ethnic, polarised society like Kenya.

When the violence occurs in Parliament, it opens the floodgates for street violence and communal hatred. This is the most effective way to destroy a beautiful country.

These fights are the painful sign that these politicians have placed a price tag on politics too, where all that matters is power at any cost, even at the cost of the community itself.

Certainly, reforming election laws at this point is tantamount to ugly manipulation. But the violent behaviour in the August house is the ultimate form of selfish gluttony, gluttony for power at the expense of communities and the country.

Dr Franceschi is the dean of Strathmore Law School. [email protected]; Twitter: @lgfranceschi