THE FUTURE IS NOW! The challenges facing young leaders in Kenya

On Friday, 2 February 2001, The Young Leadership Development Programme of the Youth Agenda invited Njonjo Mue to be guest speaker at the launch of the Young Leaders Network at a dinner held at the Stanley Hotel, Nairobi. The event was attended by close to 200 young leaders from all over Kenya, representing various sectors, who had been trained by Youth Agenda on leadership over the previous one year. The following is Njonjo’s speech.

Your Excellency, Klaus Dahlgaard, The Danish Ambassador to Kenya; Your Excellencies Young Leaders, the Hope of Kenya; distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

I am delighted to be able to participate in the launch of this important initiative. Many of you will know by now my passionate stand on the historical role young Kenyans – the Uhuru Generation – must play in restoring the fortunes of this country. The launch of the Young Leaders Network is therefore of special importance to me. This is the reason that when I was invited to speak I made every effort to get here from Johannesburg where I am currently based. I thank you for the opportunity to be with you on this special day.

As you go on to assume positions of leadership in this country, in various parts and in different sectors, I wish to share with you a few pieces of advice that you may find useful as we lay the foundations for a revolution of values that will rock not only our country, but our entire African continent.

This launch is taking place at a historical moment in our country as we seek to forge consensus on constitutional reform. In my view, it is not an accident that Kenya is grappling with the need to reform the Constitution at this point, 40 years after independence. For the social contract that bound our parents’ generation is no longer strong enough to bind us. We must redefine what nationhood means to us.

The starting point in this regard is to ask ourselves afresh, “What is Kenya and what makes me a Kenyan? I’m I more or less Luo, Kamba, Kipsigis or Maasai than Kenyan? Are you more or less male or female than Kenyan? Are we more or less Christian, Muslim or Hindu than Kenyan? How do these multiple identities play themselves out in your psyche? Do we feel the need to run away from any one of them to embrace our Kenyanness?

The generation of our parents were born into 42 different communities but they became Kenyans as they all united to fight the common enemy of colonial domination. Once that enemy was defeated, they then went about determining the terms of their social contract in Lancaster House and elsewhere and then attempted to build a nation. Have they succeeded? How and why have they failed?

What about us? What common enemy do we face today and on what basis shall we negotiate our new social contract? Will the glue that held our parents’ generation together still be strong enough to hold us? Apparently not. For we can see all around us depressing and alarming evidence that the social compact that once defined Kenya is quickly coming apart.

The need to renegotiate our social contract has been acknowledged by all, but there is scarce leadership with the will and the integrity to lead us in navigating through these uncharted waters. We wander aimlessly through the wilderness of our discontent longing for our Land of Promise but not even the mirage of social cohesion appears in sight.

But going back for a moment to the subject of Constitution-making. The exercise has consumed our energies for close to a decade now. And rightly so, for the Constitution is the heart of our nation from which the entire legal system gets its lifeblood, and we should give it the attention it deserves. But even as we fight over who gets to write the new Constitution, we must accept that in the end, whether we like it or not, only a small number of people (mainly politicians) will dominate the process. And even if they were to come up with the best document in the world, it would still be only half the job done.

The other, more fundamental, half is to reconstruct the soul of our nation. This is the responsibility of every individual citizen and cannot be left to the politicians alone. It is an exercise that defines what is the essence of being Kenyan. What is the soul of our nation? What are the ties that bind? In other words, what are the core values that make us who we are as Kenyans – above our diverse ethnic nationalities and beneath our common citizenship of the human family?

It is vital to reach a consensus on the values we espouse as Kenyans, for we cannot move forward as a nation until we know and internalize what that nationhood entails and until we each individually and voluntarily subscribe to a core set of beliefs. Once consensus on this is reached, then, through mutually agree coercion, we can ascribe censure to those who transgress our covenant. This is the essence of a society governed by laws and not by men and women. It is our role as young leaders to show the way in this regard.

In an age where the custodians of our nation are falling all over themselves queuing to cash their tribal chips and proclaiming from the rooftops, ‘it is our turn to eat’, we must take a stand on high ground and speak up on behalf of ourselves and our country. For Kenya yearns for men and women who will identify themselves as leaders by their capacity to define those issues that unite us as a nation.

Far be it from me to advise you on how to play this historic role. For the challenges we shall face will obviously differ according to the place where we find ourselves being called to serve. But there are a few pointers that I believe are of general application and which will be of value to us as we take our country back from those who have led it down the stony path which we have been traveling on.

Firstly, we must always lead by example. We must ensure that we walk the talk and that we do not require a higher standard from others than we ourselves are willing to live by. The sorry state of our country today can be directly traced to those who have made it their stock in trade to preach water and drink wine, those who pretend to be servants in word to enable them to become masters in deed. We must not only shun them, we must determine never to be like them. People will only follow a leader who will not send them to places she herself is unwilling to go. We must become the change we seek.

Secondly, we must learn to see leadership not just as position, but as influence. Each of us here in this room is in a place to influence two or three people everyday – at home, at school, in the workplace. We must seize these opportunities to inculcate our core values in these people. We must not wait to be elevated to some position before attempting to change our society.

Third, we must learn the value of working together. We all have different gifts which should be applied together for the cause. And this is particularly useful as we launch this leadership network tonight, which suggests to me that you have already recognized the importance of working together. We must bring together all the brilliant constellation of talents to light up our collective path. There is no room for a messiah as the messiah is to be found in all of us. We must work together.

Fourth, we must always remember that leadership is about pursuing excellence, and someone has defined excellence as doing your best where you are with what you have. We should not try to change the world all at once. We should instead remember that a chain is as strong as its weakest link and that if I am not doing my best where I am, I am letting the whole side down.

Fifth, we must remember that Kenya is not lacking in intelligent, passionate people in leadership. But many of them are not making much difference because our country woefully lacks leaders of character and commitment. We must seek to urgently fill this void. Leadership without commitment quickly fizzles into nothingness or mutates into predatory dictatorship.

Finally, after all the talking has been done, after all the analysis has been carried out, we must energize ourselves into action. There are far too many bar-room philosophers who daily turn the question of Kenya's woes upside down and inside-out, discover the solutions to our most intricate problems, stagger home, slump into bed and snore their brilliant ideas away, only to wake up in the morning and start this cycle of pain and denial all over again.

We must choose a different path. We must act now. No  doubt we will encounter many obstacles and we will make our mistakes. But the worst mistake we can make is to do nothing. So whatever we do when faced with one of the many challenges that we shall confront when we leave here tonight, we must act. We must adopt the slogan of a popular shoe brand and JUST DO IT!

The theme of your conference this week captures the urgency of the moment simply yet so powerfully: The future has come! To this I would like to add the words of a verse in one of my favourite hymns, which might as well have been composed for our generation at such a time as this:

            A new dawn is coming

            A new age to come

            When the children of promise

            Shall flow together as one

            A truth long neglected

            But the time has now come

            When the children of promise

            Must stand together as one.

As we leave here tonight to assume our places on the stage of human affairs, we must remember that Kenya belongs to us and that it is we who must save it or lose it. The choices we make today will determine the fate of generations to come. But take heart, victory is inevitable if we stay the course. We shall overcome.

I thank you.