Mediocrity is a frail master and Kenya must break away

What you need to know:

  • Could it be argued that mediocrity is also a habit, one that we are cultivating, consciously or otherwise?
  • Mediocrity is the comfort found in cognitive dissonance, wished away today in the hopes of a better tomorrow, as if tomorrow won’t be informed by today
  • Let us not forget, however, that excellence lurks, and is not unnatural to most of us

Kenya is a country filled with brilliant minds, and people of great talents. Yet mediocrity hangs over this nation like an ominous, yet familiar cloud.

In fact, I think the shackles mediocrity has us in are self-imposed.

To go for one of the most popularly-cited examples of Kenyan excellence, athletics, many a marathon is a bunch of people chasing Kenyans, or so the joke goes.

"We got this," we tell ourselves. We succeed at athletics, so much so that despite a bungled journey to the Olympics, 2016 was our country’s best performance yet.

There are very few corners of this earth to which one will venture and not find Kenyans, defying odds to “make it or make it”, to quote Jimmy Gait.

However, the discipline to cultivate our collective excellence to work for the collective good of all Kenyans is missing, and needed!

It bears repeating that excellence is a habit; we are what we repeatedly do. Could it be argued that mediocrity is also a habit, one that we are cultivating consciously or otherwise?

It might be for future generations to analyse, using any hindsight that might be bestowed upon them, how we got to creating an alternative value system, where our creativity and enterprise are materially rewarded through corruption.

Corruption rewards so much that a significant portion of Kenya’s youth now have no problem with resorting to corrupt ways if it adds up to economic prosperity.

SECRETLY AND SELFISHLY

The placation of “someni vijana, mwongeze kila bidii, mwisho wa kusoma utapata kazi nzuri sana”(study, children, spare no effort; after school you will get very good jobs) has been exposed for the lie it has become. If you want to accrue wealth now, it seems you must be ready to get your hands dirty, in corrupt ways.

Things may well have got to this point because we allowed mediocrity to normalise in mainstream systems. A significant number of us are subservient to a master who has no business commanding us.

Kenya, at 53, is in a moral crisis. The current political authorities are rather incapable of speaking to it, since much of the political order is designed to unseat the incumbents who benefit from a fundamentally flawed political and governance system, so that others amass the same gains.

Mediocrity is the vicious circle of complaining about potholes and flooded roads, and not organising around that rage towards a concerted civic voice and demands for accountability,even when avenues to do so are provided.  

Mediocrity is turning on your favourite news channel or talk show to see most perspectives on issues affecting us predominantly voiced through, and framed for, men or the male voicedespite the awareness raised on women’s presence.

Mediocrity is the comfort found in cognitive dissonance, wished away today in the hopes of a better tomorrow, as if tomorrow won’t be informed by today.

Mediocrity is the uncritical acquiescence to public servants’ excesses. It is to plot, secretly and selfishly, for indirect prosperity based on proximity to those robbing us blind!

Mediocrity is a seemingly pious nation that professes peace, love, unity and justice, while also okaying the emasculation and neutering of the Ethics and Integrity chapter in our katiba.

Mediocrity is the chutzpah with which anyone can declare that the President’s female relatives are eligible foraffirmative action opportunities.

CALLING KENYANS INGRATES

We have to read out the prognosis and the symptoms, and name it for what it is: mediocrity, ratified.

Never has it been easier to challenge and organiseagainst this near ubiquitous mediocrity. So many hard-earned fundamental freedoms are at our disposal, and a vast array of technologies and strategies is at hand.

What’s so wrong with mediocrity if we are still forging on? After all, we are still better than [insert comparative, often a neighbouring country]. What does it matter if it benefits me, or if the benefits of mediocrity are on the horizon, within reach?

That is a mediocre justification of a messy and unsustainable status quo.

Mediocrity iscalling Kenyans ingrates or brats, for demanding excellence. Mediocrity is deciding between justice and injustice depending on whether it affects you and yours, or by how you treat the women, children and the disadvantaged in your spheres of existence.

We are becoming, or have become, a nation in which mediocrity is consented to or celebrated. Those values and principles on paper are just that, words on paper.

It is hard to put a positive, hopeful twist to this mediocre reality. It is the frame for our upcoming election, and for our Ukenya. Mediocrity means going into the election season and emerging on the other side with the same outcome. 

Let us not forget, however, that excellence lurks, and is not unnatural to most of us. Till then, mediocrity remains the unwieldy master of the Kenyan state.

Twitter: @NiNanjira