KENYA: POWER BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE?

KENYA: POWER BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE?

By Njonjo Mue

"Power belongs to the people" is one of those statements that we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel in control. But like so many other things, it is a lie.

In Kenya, power belongs to the mean-looking men dressed in jungle fatigues and maroon berets, wielding automatic weapons and batons, bearing shields and teargas. Power belongs to them, and to the faceless bureaucrats and unaccountable securocrats who deploy them to swiftly impose their will on "the people" as the latter continue to believe the lie that power belongs to them.

We the people are powerless. And the sooner we understand that, the sooner we can devise strategies to survive in this world where those with guns and batons and shields and teargas dressed in jungle fatigues and maroon berets have all the power and we all the powerlessness.

But what will those strategies look like? How will we survive in this world where power always seems to have the final say?

By remembering that when you meet a block of stone that looks like a man, if you kick it, you only hurt yourself. By understanding that it is fear, not hate, that makes men unleash the instruments of death on their fellow human beings. And that it is pointless to hate a fearful person.

For a person whose fear has calcified him into a stone can ultimately only be transformed back into the person whom God created in love by being loved back into a human being, even if that love initially hurts us so much, before it can begin to heal, and, ultimately, to save both the lover and the beloved.

Power does not belong to the people. Love does. And with love we will not just survive. We will thrive. For love never fails.

PRODUCE MIGUNA MIGUNA IN COURT BY THURSDAY

PRODUCE MIGUNA MIGUNA IN COURT BY THURSDAY

BY NJONJO MUE
WE THE PEOPLE

My name is Njonjo Mue and I am a Kenyan by birth. My Kenyan citizenship is a God-given right and not a favour granted by the government. The Constitution of Kenya protects it and guarantees it. It does not grant it. The government may abuse this right because it has the power to do so and the physical control of our borders, but it cannot legitimately take it away.

I hold an ordinary Kenyan Passport. It too is a right and not a favour. I have the right to leave and enter Kenya as I wish using the said passport as do all other Kenyans.

Like many Kenyans, I have watched helplessly as our government has abused the same rights of another Kenyan, rights that I take for granted for myself. I have watched in frustration as our courts have at first demanded, then requested, then pleaded and finally begged the government to respect their orders on this matter, in accordance with our Constitution, but to no avail.

I watched in dismay on Monday night as hundreds of armed policemen descended upon our airport, beat up journalists and roughed up lawyers who were trying to do their jobs. I also watched helplessly on local and international news as the reputation of our country was being shredded before the eyes of the world by people with guns at the orders of faceless bureaucrats and unaccountable securocrats. Like countless other Kenyans I could only grin and bare it because I had no power and I had no guns.

In the course of this experience, I have come to the realisation that it is not power that corrupts in moments like these, it is powerlessness. We as Kenyans are approaching the abyss of powerlessness, and therefore are most vulnerable to the corruption of powerlessness. This is the corruption that causes irresistible temptation to violence, even when one knows all too well that violence is ultimately counterproductive.

But we will not give in to that temptation because there is still one more thing we can do to stand up to those who defy our courts because they have guns.

The courts have done their part in the exercise of the authority given to them by we the citizens, but you the government have ignored them. It is time that we the people started to exercise that authority directly. In so doing, we are giving you one last opportunity to do the right thing.

On behalf of We The People, I am therefore directing Interior Secretary Fred Matiang'i, Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinett and the PS for Immigration Gordon Kihalangwa to produce Dr. Miguna Miguna in a court of competent jurisdiction within the Republic of Kenya at or before 12.00 Noon on Thursday, the 5th day April 2018.

Failure to do this will result not in conviction for contempt or a fine or a jail sentence, because we are past that point. It shall result in consequences for yourselves that are commensurate to the contempt that you continue to show to the Kenyan people.

SIGNED, for and on behalf of the People of Kenya,

Njonjo Mue

end/NM/30.03.2018

KENYA IS HOME

KENYA IS HOME

By Njonjo Mue

Every morning, our 20 month old daughter, Naserian, cries from her cot to signal that she is ready to start her day. I pick her up, we say a short morning prayer, and start our short walk from her bedroom upstairs to join the rest of the family for breakfast in the dining room.

As we pass the map of the world on the wall of the corridor at the top of the staircase, I point to a particular spot on the map and ask, "Naserian, What is this?"

"Kenya," she says, her eyes lighting up with pride at being able to remember. She then looks at me eagerly with a ready answer for the follow up question that she knows is coming.

"And where is Kenya?" I ask, knowing that she will not move from where she stands, less still have her breakfast, before she can answer that question for all to hear.

"Kenya is home!" she says with pride and joy combined, as if in that simple sentence belongs the answers to all the hidden mystries of life.

Earlier this week, as we performed this ritual with my daughter, I imagined Miguna Miguna doing the same with his mother in Nyando sometime in 1964.

This was at a time when he and his family, along with the entire population of a young nation looked forward with hope to claiming all the promises of independence. On top of that list must have been the fact that, after a century of enduring the humiliation of slavery and the abuse of colonial rule, they would never again be called the children of a lesser god.

This was before Miguna grew up to become a restless youth who was unwilling to make peace with injustice.

This was before he was thrown out of college, detained, tortured, jailed, exiled and forced to temporarily acquire the citizenship of a foreign country in order to survive the hostile life of an exile.

On the morning after the night before, Miguna's voice would not leave my troubled mind, his screams at the door of Emirates EK722 haunting me, "I am not boarding! I know no one in Dubai! I don't have my luggage, I don't have my passport. I'm going nowhere!"

On this day, I tried to distract my daughter as we went down for breakfast, hoping to escape the ritual whose meaning was not so clear to me any more.

However, she too seemed to have heard Miguna's screams in her sleep. For she would not take one step beyond the map along the corridor. Like Miguna at the door of Emirates EK722, she demanded to be heard.

"Naserian," I finally called her, trying this time to avoid looking directly at the twinkle in her innocent eyes. "What is this?" I asked, pointing to the familiar spot on the map.

"Kenya," she said with excitement, then waited, sensing my conflict.

"Where is Kenya?" I asked, unable to hide the conflicting emotions that now threatened to boil over.

"Kenya is home," she whispered tentatively for the first time, confused and unsure that she had given the right answer.

end/NM/30.3.2018