The prevailing state of insecurity in Kenyan in general and in our major cities in particular is a sign of deep-rooted cancer in our values as a nation. Resorting to the cheap options of shooting gangsters is akin to immaculately addressing a festering wound that will eventually send us all to our graves.
Our values as a society have been shaken to the core and we must promptly re-evaluate the relevance of our present laws, morals and living philosophy. The spate of wanton destruction of lives is the epitome of our callousness in how cheap a price we attach to life. It’s no rocket science to see the need to going back to the basics of civilized living. Interest groups will predictably and shamelessly bandy high-sounding clichés to explain our predicament. Nothing could be further from the truth, behind their lofty slogans lurks unadulterated selfishness principally tailored to protect their turf to remain relevant for donor funding. Granted, they shout out very valid and sound arguments albeit subjective.
Our country is on fire as a result of living in a serial state of denial for perishable political goals. The obscene gap between the haves and the have-nots has erased any trace of pretence in living the cherished communal lives as Africans. We must see the forest for the trees and stop blaming our shadows and enemies from without fro our own shortsightedness. A total and honest rehabilitation of our egos and values is not negotiable.
Life must be respected for the sacred entity it is and nobody has any authority of play God in taking it away, ex-judicial or otherwise. When the police shoot suspects in cold blood they are simply committing murder which is inexcusable and unforgivable. The law is not naive to grant them the power to immobilize and interrogate such suspects. By killing them, the law enforces are unwittingly killing the evidence and intelligence they desperately need to plan and maintain the country’s security. Unless the police force are inviting us to entertain the rumour that they are merely eliminating their accomplices in crime for fear of being exposed.
Resorting to archaic Hammurabi’s law of an eye for an eye is cheap philosophy that only succeeds in making the whole world blind. Extra-judicial deaths are simplistic and defeat both our legal and moral fibres. Its incumbent upon all of us have an honest re-examinations of ourselves and engage meaningful intellectual discourses devoid of cheap emotions which will only succeed in destroying lives and breaking families. It’s simple, you can’t rehabilitate the dead and two wrongs never made a right
We don’t have the head to merely separate our ears but the gray matter is what makes us different from the inhabitants of the jungle. Unprofessional bravado and chest thumbing from the police makes them no different from the insensitive thugs they hunt. Their beastly actions on TV during prime time news makes one wonder whether any of our kids can contemplate ever being a policeman unless they want to play uninteresting inferior versions of Hollywood thrillers. The police commissioner had done well by rallying Kenyans against the most wanted criminals. But the uncivilized ending eroded the goodwill. Even Lucifer on his knees does not deserve a bullet in his head unless we are comfortable with the nasty scenes of innocent kids watching live movies on the streets and in the estates.
You don’t have to be religious to appreciate the value of life or detest destruction of any of its components . Every Kenyan must teach, understand, respect and practice the cardinal values that define as a society lest history judges us harshly for having laid foundation for the culture to the future generation. Unless we do this and fast, then we are inadvertently busy cutting deals with the devil to undermine God’s singular gift to humankind, life.
Wednesday 21 February 2007
Tuesday 13 February 2007
All Heat No Light
It is the season again of grand promises and talk that are never meant to be respected. Kenyans should brace themselves for more free-flowing advice and messages of intent from aspiring politicians. The truth is that it's another cog in the vicious circle wheel of deceit that we will never come out of.
Kenyans politicians have perfected the art of shameless cheating. Add to this mix our uncritical approach to electing leaders provided they speak out mother tongue and all you get is an exotic recipe for disastrous leadership. We need not blame our politicians for any wrong since without our votes they won't be there. If anything we get the leaders we deserve.
Our greed and thirst to succeed wealthwise at any cost has inadvertently blinded us to observing any tenet of morality. With the hefty salaries for MPs, our parliament has become the most sort after address for job seekers who mostly happen to be retirees or crooks or both. They are ready to invest their ill-gotten wealth to grease our hand with their eyes singularly trained on the handsome tax-free packages.
Look around you and all you see is plenty of motions without movement. Roads are being demolished to give an impression of pending works. Your guess is as good as mine, all these are aimed at hoodwinking us into believing that something is being done. However, once we do that the politicians will be all smiles to bunge laughing at our folly.
My take is to trust nobody pretending to be having the answers to all our problems without telling us what he has done in his or her small way to make our country different. Our generation stand the risk of stagnating eternal and being held hostage by the dinosaurs who have rapped our motherland. As we worship money, the fallacy of wealth at whatever cost will definitely come to haunt us forever. We must rise above pettiness and resist being misused. Let us not be deluded any more that we are the leaders of tomorrow. The future is here and now and we must seize it to shame the scoundrels masquerading as our saviours.
Kenyans politicians have perfected the art of shameless cheating. Add to this mix our uncritical approach to electing leaders provided they speak out mother tongue and all you get is an exotic recipe for disastrous leadership. We need not blame our politicians for any wrong since without our votes they won't be there. If anything we get the leaders we deserve.
Our greed and thirst to succeed wealthwise at any cost has inadvertently blinded us to observing any tenet of morality. With the hefty salaries for MPs, our parliament has become the most sort after address for job seekers who mostly happen to be retirees or crooks or both. They are ready to invest their ill-gotten wealth to grease our hand with their eyes singularly trained on the handsome tax-free packages.
Look around you and all you see is plenty of motions without movement. Roads are being demolished to give an impression of pending works. Your guess is as good as mine, all these are aimed at hoodwinking us into believing that something is being done. However, once we do that the politicians will be all smiles to bunge laughing at our folly.
My take is to trust nobody pretending to be having the answers to all our problems without telling us what he has done in his or her small way to make our country different. Our generation stand the risk of stagnating eternal and being held hostage by the dinosaurs who have rapped our motherland. As we worship money, the fallacy of wealth at whatever cost will definitely come to haunt us forever. We must rise above pettiness and resist being misused. Let us not be deluded any more that we are the leaders of tomorrow. The future is here and now and we must seize it to shame the scoundrels masquerading as our saviours.
Tuesday 6 February 2007
Supping With the Devil
Success at any cost seems to be the plastic guiding light in our lives as Kenyans albeit latently. Don't get me wrong for painting the virtues of success in bad light. But what I mean here is success that is exclusively rolled into the depth of your pockets.
We have unwittingly placed price tags on virtually everything upto and including our morals as a nation. The hitherto revered title Mzee which conveyed honour and respect is nowadays bandied with abandon to anybody who can doll out handouts to sycophants. what is more, these so-called tycoons end up misconstruing their priced fame into popularity contests with eyes shamelessly trained on political price. Do I need to belabour the awful quality of leaders we have? Well, you guess is as good as mine.
Money has turned into a god that controls every facet of our lives and its scent makes us go gaga with no element of sophistication. My heart bleeds for the young generation of Kenyans who will refuse to take up their university places because they have been admitted to study BA arguing that such courses have no future (read money) for them. We couldn't be more naive and short-sighted.
To equate education to wealth is to cuddle inverted priorities. It is comparison based on the wrong premises to say the least and flawed at worst. One leads to the other and the converse is not true. Ask Njenga Karume what his wish is to have and money would not be one of them. He could be able to pay all Kenya civil servants for a whole year frok his pocket but he can't buy the cognitive powers that are only imparted in formal classroom.
True, you don't need a degree to qualify as an intelligent and wise Kenyan by village standards. But come to think of it folks, the psychomotor and affective skills have their own limitations in the absence of their cognitive cousin. Make no mistake, I am not demonising wealth per se. But the truth remains that the rich fools have succeeded in trashing the quality of what lies in between our ears by brainwashing to only value what they have, mourn what we lack and devalue and despise what we possess. Tell me dear Kenyans, who is the smarter one now?
We are busy hawking our treasured certificates in the market for the highest bidder to sample and shit on. We even shamelessly call some village semi-illiterate professor of politics just because they can shrewdly play us against each other using ill-gotten wealth for their selfish survival. If only we could take a minute to reminice and reflect on what it takes to earn a degree leave alone obtaing a PhD before you scale the academic ladder to be a professor! It amounts to a disgraceful insult to our collective intelligence as Kenyans in general and to the diligent dons in particular. No wonder the latter are left envying the space occupied by sardines in a tin as they squeeze themselves in metal contraptions going by the name of matatus.
We must return to and appreciate the basics of life and more importantly respect the value of education for what it is. Education must not be left at the mercy of political sharks and turncoats. It must be left to professions because it remain the singular known foundation of any success and development. Until that is done, we are inadvertently ruining our lives and motherland in advance and that is no worse a sin than supping with the devil.
Taabu
We have unwittingly placed price tags on virtually everything upto and including our morals as a nation. The hitherto revered title Mzee which conveyed honour and respect is nowadays bandied with abandon to anybody who can doll out handouts to sycophants. what is more, these so-called tycoons end up misconstruing their priced fame into popularity contests with eyes shamelessly trained on political price. Do I need to belabour the awful quality of leaders we have? Well, you guess is as good as mine.
Money has turned into a god that controls every facet of our lives and its scent makes us go gaga with no element of sophistication. My heart bleeds for the young generation of Kenyans who will refuse to take up their university places because they have been admitted to study BA arguing that such courses have no future (read money) for them. We couldn't be more naive and short-sighted.
To equate education to wealth is to cuddle inverted priorities. It is comparison based on the wrong premises to say the least and flawed at worst. One leads to the other and the converse is not true. Ask Njenga Karume what his wish is to have and money would not be one of them. He could be able to pay all Kenya civil servants for a whole year frok his pocket but he can't buy the cognitive powers that are only imparted in formal classroom.
True, you don't need a degree to qualify as an intelligent and wise Kenyan by village standards. But come to think of it folks, the psychomotor and affective skills have their own limitations in the absence of their cognitive cousin. Make no mistake, I am not demonising wealth per se. But the truth remains that the rich fools have succeeded in trashing the quality of what lies in between our ears by brainwashing to only value what they have, mourn what we lack and devalue and despise what we possess. Tell me dear Kenyans, who is the smarter one now?
We are busy hawking our treasured certificates in the market for the highest bidder to sample and shit on. We even shamelessly call some village semi-illiterate professor of politics just because they can shrewdly play us against each other using ill-gotten wealth for their selfish survival. If only we could take a minute to reminice and reflect on what it takes to earn a degree leave alone obtaing a PhD before you scale the academic ladder to be a professor! It amounts to a disgraceful insult to our collective intelligence as Kenyans in general and to the diligent dons in particular. No wonder the latter are left envying the space occupied by sardines in a tin as they squeeze themselves in metal contraptions going by the name of matatus.
We must return to and appreciate the basics of life and more importantly respect the value of education for what it is. Education must not be left at the mercy of political sharks and turncoats. It must be left to professions because it remain the singular known foundation of any success and development. Until that is done, we are inadvertently ruining our lives and motherland in advance and that is no worse a sin than supping with the devil.
Taabu
Saturday 3 February 2007
Our Generation are Tribeless
Mention Maina Kiai, John Githogo, Mwalimu Mati and what strikes your conscience is integrity and steadfastness. But what do Kenyans have for these gallant sons of ours? Well, as Githongo would say, most fools would think he is a sell out betraying his own tribesmen. But to these three people their tribal identity ends at their names period.
Unlike most educated Kenyans who will chase leather even at the expense of kissing hell they don't give a hoot. Time has come for Kenyans to get the leaders we deserve. We cannot afford to be slaves to our present crop of selfish and corrupt politicians who we vote year in year out because they will shamelessly grease our palms with ill gotten wealth.
Time is now and we have the ultimate weapon, vote. We must urge and push the true sons and daughters of Kenya to come out, role their sleeves and dirty their hand in politics because as Kwame Nkurumah said eons ago 'seek ye political kingdom and the rest shall follow'. To argue otherwise is the height of political and practical naivety. In Africa politics greases every cog in our lives and we must put a stop to the dinosaurs we have for leaders.
We can't afford to waste this election year lest we end up entertaining the resultant stinking stench for the next five years. I urge every Kenyan proud of his or her motherland, which I don't doubt you all are, to rise about our cheap ethnic roots and make out country and a shining example in the continent and the while wide world. Please, fellow Kenyans rise up and put your country on the global map for all the right reasons. I promise to do my part please join me, won't you?
Taabu
Unlike most educated Kenyans who will chase leather even at the expense of kissing hell they don't give a hoot. Time has come for Kenyans to get the leaders we deserve. We cannot afford to be slaves to our present crop of selfish and corrupt politicians who we vote year in year out because they will shamelessly grease our palms with ill gotten wealth.
Time is now and we have the ultimate weapon, vote. We must urge and push the true sons and daughters of Kenya to come out, role their sleeves and dirty their hand in politics because as Kwame Nkurumah said eons ago 'seek ye political kingdom and the rest shall follow'. To argue otherwise is the height of political and practical naivety. In Africa politics greases every cog in our lives and we must put a stop to the dinosaurs we have for leaders.
We can't afford to waste this election year lest we end up entertaining the resultant stinking stench for the next five years. I urge every Kenyan proud of his or her motherland, which I don't doubt you all are, to rise about our cheap ethnic roots and make out country and a shining example in the continent and the while wide world. Please, fellow Kenyans rise up and put your country on the global map for all the right reasons. I promise to do my part please join me, won't you?
Taabu
Friday 2 February 2007
Stop Digging, We are in Deep Hole
Kenya, mama Kenya, are we a cursed lot? The new millennium seemed to have smiled on us only to realize six years down the road that all our hopes were anchored on quick sand. Our country of enormous potential has become a captive of selfish politicians masquerading as leaders. Tribalism has become our bane and if your name or accent doesn't betray your ethnic roots, one is prompted to enquire your dad or grandfather's home town for a clue of your ethnicity.
Our so-called leaders are a shameless lot to say the least. Strictly speaking they have no trace of leadership hosted in their sadistic shells for human beings. Their sense of memory is totally impaired and what they claim to do in our interest amounts to nothing but abusing our collective intelligence as Kenyans. Look around you and show me one honest Kenyan politician and I will bequeath you all my earthly possessions. This is no empty rhetoric nor just a hollow challenge but I am sure of retaining my meagre belongings at the end of the bet.
Ours is the only country ruled by dinosaurs who pretend to know everything while foolishly priding themselves in being graduates of Makerere. Granted, Makerere used to be the regional Harvard-equivalent. But to stick you head in the 21 century and shamelessly shape our national destiny on academic models of yester-millennium, is not only naive but the height of intellectual dishonesty at best and plain stupidity at worse.
We are all slaves to thieves of the last generation who control every aspect of our lives. Anytime they pretend to be making things move, they only succeed in sending smokescreens to maintain the status quo. We need and must have a rejuvenation and redefinition of our nationhood. The last 40 years is wasted and the less we mourn about it the better. We must have our eyes and energies singularly trained on the price of the wider picture that is the forest and stop entertaining the plastic view of the detracting trees. Need I say more? I bet not lest I spoil the broth, arise Kenya, arise.
Taabu
Our so-called leaders are a shameless lot to say the least. Strictly speaking they have no trace of leadership hosted in their sadistic shells for human beings. Their sense of memory is totally impaired and what they claim to do in our interest amounts to nothing but abusing our collective intelligence as Kenyans. Look around you and show me one honest Kenyan politician and I will bequeath you all my earthly possessions. This is no empty rhetoric nor just a hollow challenge but I am sure of retaining my meagre belongings at the end of the bet.
Ours is the only country ruled by dinosaurs who pretend to know everything while foolishly priding themselves in being graduates of Makerere. Granted, Makerere used to be the regional Harvard-equivalent. But to stick you head in the 21 century and shamelessly shape our national destiny on academic models of yester-millennium, is not only naive but the height of intellectual dishonesty at best and plain stupidity at worse.
We are all slaves to thieves of the last generation who control every aspect of our lives. Anytime they pretend to be making things move, they only succeed in sending smokescreens to maintain the status quo. We need and must have a rejuvenation and redefinition of our nationhood. The last 40 years is wasted and the less we mourn about it the better. We must have our eyes and energies singularly trained on the price of the wider picture that is the forest and stop entertaining the plastic view of the detracting trees. Need I say more? I bet not lest I spoil the broth, arise Kenya, arise.
Taabu
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