Letters & Opinions

Kenya: struggling for peace?

Andile Mngxitama

2008-02-14, Issue 345

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/46092

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I have been a great admirer of the contemporary Kenyan literary and intellectual movement for sometime now, a movement personified in Kwani? amongst others. As a relatively young South African, I have searched with no success for an equivalent development here at home. I have been mesmerised by Wainaina’s imagination and masterly use of irony. Mukoma’s political insights which are many years older than him, I cant forget the dancing poetry of Shaila Patel. But when the election related bloodletting occurred, im afraid their wailing pens went flat. They have certainly written, they have initiated and joined the peace movement, but im afraid they haven’t said anything. Maybe that is the cost one pays for success and international glory.

Why would these great minds of our time, appear like many Desmond Tutus presiding over the TRC collective mourning ceremony? Why have they banished from their pens, incitement to liberation and the attack on the neo-colony and its degenerate democrazy (apologies Fela)?

Every time I read these idols of mine, I hear “peace”. What peace? I ask. The poor of Kibera are trapped in one of the most vicious structural violence known to humanity, every single day of their miserable existence. Haven’t we felt the bitter tears of the surviving mau mau fighters? When we were in Nairobi for the WSF last year, we were told stories of state sanctioned mass killings of the poor youth, they apparently shoot to kill even for stealing a cell phone. And we talk peace? Is it not a great miracle that some people born in Kibera reached the age of 25? But for the majority of Kenyans life after Uhuru has not been a bed of roses, we also know of the never ending killings for land and forests.

My gripe more than anything is predicated upon the spectacular failure to raise an alternative voice which is not hobbled by international NGO humanitarian discourses deeply trapped in liberal democratic appeal. I yearn for a voice which would confidently redirect the violence consuming the poor of all tribes, which is organised above by the democracy elites whose sole purpose is looting. Why I don’t hear someone talk about revolutionary violence? Why I don’t hear someone say death to Kibaki and Odinga! Unity amongst the poor! Why? Because we are now struggling for peace? Not even a little justice?

The people of Kenya has every right to chose who will rule over them, in short which elite group must come in and eat as they seat in the grand stand cheering on. That’s democracy ala our new colonisers. But surely we can warn them that they need not kill each other so that their respective leaders may eat. We have a responsibility to point out that the so called democracy is really not worth dying for, maybe we should point out that it’s a little better to die fighting for your own freedom against the tyranny of money now embodied in Kibaki and Odinga.

Please let’s stop the talk of peace, which is nothing but a call to return to the abnormal normalcy of elite rule predicated upon the perpetuation of structural violence against the poor. Here in SA, it was interesting to watch through eyes burning with tear gas and gun power, how the apartheid monster turned the terms of our liberation movement into a negotiations for peace after unleashing untold violence against the blacks using black hands like the Inkatha Freedom Party thugs (remember the misleading talk of black on black violence?). So we negotiated a peaceful transition which ensured the perpetuation of black suffering.

Am I losing my mind? It’s ok if I’m, because reading Wainaina’s latest missive in the mail and guardian about those bloody Tanzanians, I have good reason to believe I’m in good company…

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