Are we a people in denial? Experts in peace studies remind us that there is a world of difference between calmness and peace. I wrote of this only two weeks ago. Amid uneasy exuberance and deceptive self-adulation in the national fabric, I cautioned against living the lie. Yet have we continued to lie to ourselves? Do we lie when we say that we conducted a peaceful election? That we have proved the world wrong? The election process is more than what happens on the polling day.
The goings on in the social media call our peace exuberance a lie. The two foremost contenders, for their part, are trading angry words in public. One has called the other a criminal. He should be in jail, we have heard. The other one has labeled his adversary an embittered perennial loser. Youth, on both sides of the divide, are angry. They are saying their own ugly things to one another. The tribal energy in all this is undisguised. Are we bold enough to face these facts? Alternatively, must we wait for them to foment and explode? Must they consume us in their own good time? If the ICC had not happened, young people would today be in the streets. They would be eating one another, alive. The narrative in the social media speaks to this. It speaks of anger, frustration and dangerous hate. We must ask, will our children live together?
Sooner or later, we shall have a new Government. If this new government does not address the cause of the bottled up anger, the monster will find its own current. It will find its own outlet; just like the Egyptian anger and that of Libya and Syria has done these past two years. It began in the social media, as a response to defective social order. It snowballed. It spilled into the streets. And the rest is history. Our leaders live in denial if they think we are immune to such happenings.
We must address the triggers and drivers of the anger on social media. However, we cannot do it the Mzalendo Kibunjia way. You cannot get far by telling angry people, “Stop! Stop! We shall jail you!” You will get nowhere. Rather, you must get to the bottom of things. You must recognise that anger feeds on something. Why are they hateful?
The best diet for public anger is an overwhelming sense of injustice.
Justice, as I have seen someone advertise on TV, is the flipside of peace. Justice itself comes in a variety of denominations. First is distributive justice. How are opportunities distributed in society?
Often times, we have whole identity groups feeling left out. Others feel underrepresented in the theatre of opportunities. This creates perfect breeding grounds for bitterness. Bitterness soon gives way to anger. Anger and frustration find violent outlets. Those who have felt violated commit fresh injustice. They imagine in their wrong way that they are restoring their rights. This is a convoluted way of looking at restorative justice.
There is also retributive justice. Those who have wronged others are punished. In the process, the abused rights are also restored. The converse of retributive justice is impunity. Reprobates get away with atrocity. They laugh at you and mock you all the way to the Court and beyond. In the circumstances, people’s faith in the justice system is thoroughly undermined. They get to believe that they have nothing to lose by engaging in violence.
Why are Kenyan tribes so hostile to one another? Why are young people – some who cannot even speak their mother tongue – so tribalised? How far can we carry on like this into the future? Can our tribes live together beyond the next five to 10 years without fundamental change in the way we do things?
These are the questions that the national leadership must address. We have instead seen President-elect, Uhuru Kenyatta, precipitately sampling the trappings of power with relish. It is as if all is well and God is happy, smiling.
Conversely, Prime Minister Raila Odinga has moved from post to pillar and from pillar to post, making angry addresses. Both take comfort in tribal formations of sorts. Uhuru seems satisfied that two tribes elected him while Raila is happy telling everyone else they have been shortchanged.
It is narrative of just the kind of leadership that lies ahead. Sooner or later, one of these two people will be in State House. When whoever does get in, eventually, they are going to find that this is just about the most difficult time to be the President of Kenya.
Uhuru or Raila, you are taking over a nation that is bursting to the seams with youthful energy that is tribal and destructive. The solution is not resident in making empty pleas for, “Peace! Peace!”
The solution rests in facing the facts. We must begin with distributive justice, relative to opportunities in the country, and restorative justice, relative to past injustices.
Telling people to keep quiet, or even threatening them with jail will only work for a little while. In the end, however, people who feel aggrieved – regardless that they are or not aggrieved – will throw all caution to the wind. Kibunjia’s NCIC can only be meaningful if it addresses the social triggers of hate. It will fail dismally if leaders imagine that their role is to tell people to keep their angry feelings to themselves. Keeping quiet does not mean you stop feeling bitter and angry. The monster only hibernates.
Ultimately, cohesion and integration will come not out of pious sermons and pleas. It will come out of sincere restorative and distributive justice. This is going to be the next President’s foremost task.
Uhuru or Raila, denial and cultural arrogance will not help you. If you think it is about filling up the place with your tribesmen, you surely have dozens of Mombasa Republican Councils waiting for you allover the place, across the country. You will soon have just about everybody with their own version of, “Pwani si Kenya!” And so help you God.
The writer is a publishing editor and special consultant and advisor on public relations and media relations
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