Journalism is about standing by helpless poor against power

A journalist covering a news event in Nakuru on November 2, 2013. PHOTO | FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • People don’t lose their rights just because they are excluded from the judicial or political processes.
  • It is immoral to the extreme to bring the resources and prestige of the State to bear in a murder case with the intention of influencing its fair determination.

What is the point of journalism? Why do reporters risk lives and put up with a friendless, obsessive existence, ferreting out facts and offending important people?

As a kid, I did a stint as the managing editor of the Nairobi Law Monthly. My boss and publisher was Mr Gitobu Imanyara, activist, politician, lawyer and journalist.

One of the biggest reporting projects we did was a campaign on behalf of people who had exhausted legal avenues for resolving their disputes. I remember Mrs Amber May, who lost her land and had fought since the days of Charles Njonjo to get it back. And then there was Mr Musikari Kombo, barred from running after losing an election petition.

There was a rich harvest of lifetime lessons in these hopeless quests. The place of the journalist is by the side of those who stand alone. People don’t lose their rights just because they are excluded from the judicial or political processes.

LEGAL RECOURSE

If you are injured, or have a dispute, it does not become any less of an injury because you have no legal recourse.

The finest moment for journalism is when all hope appears lost. That is when the relentlessness and resourcefulness of journalism finds impact. The folks for whom we campaigned were broke, broken and alone in their hopeless causes. We sought to give them hope.

On September 3, somebody lured Ms Sharon Otieno, a beautiful girl and mother of three children, the daughter of Mr Douglas Otieno and Mrs Melida Auma Otieno of Magare Village, Homa Bay County, into a car and drove her to a thicket at Ogera Village in Rachuonyo. There, heavily pregnant, Ms Otieno was raped — twice — and stabbed over and over. Her seven-month-old unborn baby was stabbed too and died. Ms Otieno bled to death.

RIGHT TO LIVE

A week later, on September 9, Ms Monica Kimani, 28, a businesswoman in South Sudan, returns home and goes to her Lamuria Apartments flat in Nairobi. That night, somebody ties her hands behind her back, tapes her mouth shut, ties her legs and hacks her throat so brutally only a small strip of flesh keeps her whole. She is left in the bathtub to bleed out like a goat. The killer even leaves the water running, possibly to wash away the blood.

Ms Otieno and Ms Kimani will never come back. Sharon’s children will not have a mother anymore. Her son was never even born. The parents of these girls will never see them again. For the families, hope is frail. They are powerless and poor, with wealth and power and connections ranged against them. This is what it is about: Asserting the right of our sisters, daughters and granddaughters to live. It is a protest against those who would exploit them, subject them to the most inhuman violence, torture them and prematurely end their lives.

CONCEAL KILLING

All persons charged in connection with these cases are innocent and will remain so until a judge, having reviewed all the evidence, finds that they killed, or helped to kill or worked to conceal the killing. That is the law; it is also the fair position to assume.

Having said that, it is immoral to the extreme to bring the resources and prestige of the State to bear in a murder case with the intention of influencing its fair determination. It goes to show what a primitive place this has become when a trial becomes a place for selfies and photo posing and not about that poor girl in the grave. The girl in the grave is the point of journalism.

* * *

Mr Ezekiel Muroria, a clearing agent in Mombasa Port, was a gentleman of the first water. I knew him in childhood; my classmate in Standard Seven. But it is in adulthood that we became fantastic friends, even with our worlds galaxies apart.

FREE SERVICES

As I wrote newspapers and spent time thinking about a lot of things, he shepherded containers through the port and spent a lot of time drinking beer and talking to friends. When I gave him a job, it didn’t always work out as planned — there were better, more efficient clearing agents — but it didn’t matter. We enjoyed the suffering and delays together. We would talk mother tongue and laugh and laugh.

We planned to retire together. He, another friend called Salim and I would buy a fishing boat. So, every sunrise we would take out our boat, catch some fish up and down the coast, drink some beer, come back mid-morning. I thought I would volunteer to teach in the afternoons in the school nearest my cottage and serve in a local council to help them plan and clean the place.

I came to understand that no one really wanted my free services; there was nothing in it for them. The point was not the education of young people, as far as some were concerned, but how they would benefit personally.

WRONG TREATMENT

Ezekiel died of Chikungunya; I was told he was given the wrong treatment. I never got over his death and I lost touch with my other friends. I have been thinking about him since his birthday in July and I decided I would go ahead and live our dream in some form — certainly without his big, beautiful smile, foolish jokes and accented Swahili.

But a man is trying to steal the dream of a couple of foolish middle-aged men. I suppose it will now be our duty to fight not just to keep the memory of our friend alive but our dream, too.