Mandela left us a gift in 2013, but government is not ready to receive it

A lot has been written about the gigantic legacy of Nelson Mandela.

And as we end this difficult year — still waiting the full official presidential election results and with 900,000 votes unaccounted for, according to Mars Group — it is good that we look back at this significant human being.

While his death was a huge loss, his legacy remains a shining light that will hopefully guide us back on track.

Mandela was a one-in-a-lifetime figure. And since his death, I have been reading and re-reading about him and his life, and wondering why Kenya was not so lucky as to have our own Mandela: a leader far-sighted, fair, reflective, courageous and brimming with integrity and the highest human values.

FAIR QUESTION

The film Invictus, about how Mandela used rugby as a tool for cohesion, reconciliation and nation building during the 1995 Rugby World Cup held in South Africa, should be necessary viewing for our political, administrative and judicial elite, and especially now when we are more divided than we have ever been despite the calm of the 2013 elections.

In a fascinating scene, Mandela has just been sworn in and as he takes an early morning walk with his bodyguards, they come across the early morning papers.

The headline is ‘He may win an election, but can he run a country?’ The bodyguards are upset, but Mandela’s reacts differently saying, “It’s a fair question.”

Such was the man who, though adored and feted globally, and on the back of an overwhelming and clear election victory, was humble enough to accept that the business of running a country was different, something he had never done before.

We should be so lucky to have such leaders in Kenya who understand that running a country needs everyone, not just their “home boys,” and not just for the personal interests of a few.

To be fair, even those who followed Mandela in South Africa have fallen way short. The booing of President Zuma at the memorial service dominated South African media, with some shocked that it could happen in front of an audience of presidents and leaders, and screened live globally to billions.

But such are the frustrations in South Africa with the scandals surrounding President Zuma, the most outrageous being the ‘renovation’ of his rural home — at tax-payers’ expense — for US $20 million. That is about Sh1.7 billion!

Mandela lived and breathed the hard fought and negotiated South African constitution, knowing that that was what the people of South Africa wanted and needed.

The best guarantee of stability, development and peace was to craft the country to the dictates of the Constitution.

DEMOCRATIC SPACE

So I shudder at how little the Jubilee regime cares for our Constitution. For them, the freedoms there — of expression, media, association, assembly, information etc — seem a nuisance to be ignored or, worse, negated. For nothing else can explain their dogged desire to reduce democratic space.

And nothing else can explain their turning to one of the most repressive tools favoured by despots in nyumba kumi. Yes, there is insecurity, but spying on neighbours has never reduced insecurity.

That only increases fear and intimidation.

What reduces insecurity is a non-corrupt police force that focuses on the junior police officer on the street and not the living large of the top.

What reduces insecurity is when the law is applied equally to both rich and poor.

And what reduces insecurity is when we end the impunity for the rich and powerful, and when corruption is addressed from the top down.

And now we learn that the Office of the President, the most resourced yet opaque of all offices, is extorting, illegally and covertly, funds from other ministries in ways that do not foster accountability or transparency.

These extra-budgetary allocations need parliamentary approval as per the Constitution.

If Jubilee could take a few lessons from Mandela in 2014, we will be a much better country!

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