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.

LETTER TO SOUTH AFRICAN PRESIDENT THABO MBEKI

[On the occasion of the swearing in of Thabo Mbeki as the second democratically elected President of South Africa, in my capacity as leader of the Kenya Democratic Initiative in South Africa (KENDISA), I wrote the incoming President a letter objecting to the invitation of President Daniel Arap Moi to attend the swearing in ceremony and urging President Mbeki to intervene to halt the human rights abuses of the Kenya Government and help hasten the coming of a new democratic order in Kenya. ]

16^th June 1999

The Kenya Democratic Initiative in South Africa

P.O. Box 30942

Braamfontein

Johannesburg

President Thabo Mbeki

Office of the President

Union Buildings

Pretoria

Dear President Mbeki,

Please receive our warmest congratulations on your election as South Africa’s second democratically elected President. Your overwhelming victory is a sign of the faith that the people of South Africa have in your leadership and an extension of the mandate that they gave the African National Congress in 1994 to continue leading the transformation of South Africa into a modern democratic state and creating a new legacy of freedom and democracy.

We also wish to take this opportunity to commend the people of South Africa for peacefully organizing and conducting a successful election and in so doing for continuing to entrench democracy and the rule of law at home and showing an example to the rest of the continent.

The challenges you and your government face in the next five years are daunting. But we trust that under your able leadership, the people of South Africa will continue to do what they have done so well in the last five years – to act together, as the ANC election manifesto bids them, further to give birth to a South Africa of freedom, prosperity and security for all, committed to act together to solve the national problems that confront all South Africans.

As Africans, we rejoice in the strides that South Africans have made since they ended apartheid minority rule five years ago and we join you in looking forward to a future full of hope for this country and for the continent of Africa. As Kenyans residing here, we express our gratitude for the hospitality that has been extended to us by fellow Africans.

Kenya and South Africa share a common history of struggle against colonial rule. President Mandela has gone on record as saying how our own struggle against colonialism inspired the ANC in the 1950s, and how the Mau Mau Freedom Fighters provided part of the inspiration for the formation of Umkonto we Sizwe. And although Kenya was not one of the frontline states, some of South Africa’s exiles during the days of apartheid found a welcoming home in our country. We imagine that it is in light of these shared historical ties that President Daniel Arap Moi has been invited to attend your inauguration.

However, we find it ironical that President Moi can be present at what is, in effect, a celebration of democracy and respect for human rights less than a week after his government violently disrupted Kenyans who were peacefully demonstrating in Nairobi. Their only crime was to ask for a people-driven process of much needed constitution reform – a process that will ensure that the people shall govern.

Mr. President, we remind you that the ANC election manifesto places a high stake on the African Renaissance and emphasizes South African’s role in bringing it about. It says in part:

“Our challenge is to promote peace and development, to foster democratic systems of government, respect for human rights, and an end to corruption throughout the continent.”

But while the days of dictatorship are decidedly over for South Africa, the Kenyan government, under President Moi, seems committed to swim against the current and to march against the spirit of the African Renaissance. The following are but a few examples of how the Kenyan government has failed its people:

Basic rights:

President Moi’s government continues to abuse basic rights of citizens at will and trample the people’s legitimate aspirations at whim. This was most recently demonstrated by last week’s events in Nairobi. Kenyan citizens cannot express their views without inviting brute violence from the police. Ironically, the same police force that is so efficient in disrupting peaceful demonstrations is unable to guarantee security to the majority of Kenyans, especially those that are suspected of holding views contrary to those of the establishment. Torture in police cells is endemic. The labour movement – so instrumental to the liberation of South Africa – is virtually dead in Kenya, as the government will not let it operate and organize independently.

Corruption:

President Moi has over the decades presided over one of the most corrupt systems on the globe. State coffers have been looted bare by people in government and their close associates.

In the last week alone, the official report of the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee has revealed the theft of millions of shillings from the taxpayer by people in power. The Vice President and a senior Cabinet Minister in Moi’s government have been implicated in a Kshs 850 Million (85 Million Rands) scam, while the President’s son is alleged in the same report to have imported six luxury cars without paying duty.  Impunity is the name of the game as year after year the Auditor-General reveals massive corruption implicating individuals whom, in spite of overwhelming evidence, the state does not prosecute, because they form an integral part of the ruling cabal.

In the meantime, the state in unable to provide basic services such as medical care to the most needy, education and security. The number of people who die in hospitals for lack of drugs and facilities, and in preventable accidents on roads that have not been repaired for years as the money has disappeared into private accounts, is fast approaching genocidal proportions.

Constitutional reforms:

Virtually every sector in Kenya is facing imminent collapse, yet the government refuses to listen to any voice but its own deafening self adulation. After a long struggle for meaningful liberation that will enable the people to govern through a new democratic constitution, the Kenyan government has recently thwarted genuine efforts at making such as a constitution a reality. Ignoring a national outcry, President Moi now insists on using a Parliament which is neither wholly legitimate nor truly representative to rubberstamp a document of his own making whose only aim will be to perpetuate the 36 year reign of the ruling party in power.

Mr. President, Kenya has many problems – their name is legion! South Africa too has its own problems, and one might well legitimately ask why we should burden you and your new administration with our problems while there is so much that needs your attention at home. We seek to involve you in the affairs of our country for three main reasons:

First, you will agree that, as Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. The problems in Kenya are causing a major exodus of desperate people seeking a better future and many are ending up in South Africa. It is in the interest of South Africa to help Kenya to resolve the issues facing us and thereby make our country habitable again. We would respectfully remind you of your words in your address to the United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan, on 9 April 1998, where you said:

Such are the political imperatives of the African Renaissance which are inspired both by our painful history of recent decades and the recognition of the fact that none of our countries is an island which can isolate itself from the reset, and that none of us can truly succeed if the rest fail.

Second, while the problems facing Kenya may be similar to those of South Africa, the distinction should always be made that South Africa’s problems are a legacy of apartheid which the people have together embarked upon dismantling. Kenya’s problems on the other hand are a creation of a handful of selfish and corrupt individuals who have entrenched themselves in power and seem to be on a crusade to impoverish the rest of the citizenry and deny them their basic human dignity.

In your speech in Tokyo, you committed to fighting neo-colonialism in Africa to ensure that the people did indeed get to govern themselves. You said that the exit of Mobutu Sese Seko from the African stage represented the death of neo-colonialism on our continent. But we hasten to point out that African kleptocracy did not die with Mobutu, for there are still some leaders with mobutu-esque tendencies who preside over the hopeless impoverishment of their own people. The African Renaissance shall not dawn on our continent  as long as enlightened African leaders continue to turn a blind eye on their wayward brethren and the consequent suffering of millions of their fellow Africans.

Third, the recent South African elections are a glowing testimony to a young constitutional order that is working. South Africa is blessed with one of the most liberal constitutions in the world and one which the South African people themselves drafted in a truly participatory process through the Constitutional Assembly. These lessons in constitution-making are still fresh in the minds of South Africans and can be shared with Kenyans as we seek a way out of the quagmire into which we have sunk.

In this regard, our plea to you is easily captured by paraphrasing your own plea to your Japanese audience, with reference to the Meiji Restoration, in your speech of April 1998:

We are moved by the conviction that the last five years of South African history and the  transformation from the troubled days of apartheid to the point, today, where you have a vibrant, modern, democratic state, has a multiplicity of lessons for us Kenyans, which we cannot afford to ignore or, worse still, not know. If we as students are badly informed and badly governed as we are, you have a responsibility to be our teachers. The people of Kenya are ready to learn, even if their leaders are not.

Mr. Mbeki, as we share in the joy of South Africans today when you are inaugurated as their new President; and as we join in marking Youth Day – a day when so many fell in order that the people might govern – we humbly seek to remind you that elsewhere on this continent, life is a daily struggle that is quickly becoming a meaningless search for meaning. We ask for the intervention of your government in a multiplicity of fora to help us hasten the day when our own “dark days of despair shall give way to the season of hope.”

We thank you for your kind attention, Your Excellency, and take this opportunity to convey to you the assurances of our highest consideration.

Yours faithfully,

Njonjo Mue

for The Kenya Democratic Initiative in South Africa

ACCEPTANCE SPEECH BY NJONJO MUE, JURIST OF THE YEAR 2000

The Kenya Section of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ-K) on 8th December 2000 named me the Jurist of the Year for 2000. At the time, I was based in Johannesburg where I was working for an international human rights organization. I was presented with the award at a ceremony marking the International Human Rights Day in Nairobi. The award is given annually by ICJ-K in recognition and appreciation of exemplary performance in the protection of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. At 33, I became the youngest recipient of the award. Below is my acceptance speech. 

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Fellow human rights crusaders, ladies and gentlemen, good evening.

I am delighted and deeply humbled to be able to accept the Jurist of the Year Award for 2000. I come to this place from a point of distinct disadvantage on two scores. Not only shall I be attempting to walk in the giant footsteps of such luminaries as Pheroze Nowrojee, Martha Karua, James Orengo and Kivutha Kibwana, I am also somewhat of an outsider having spent the last three  and a half years working from South Africa. You will therefore forgive me tonight if I come across as being a little intimidated.

Let me start by pointing out that in electing me Jurist of the Year, ICJ-K has taken two bold steps in one, for which I would like to pause and congratulate you.

First, you have this year chosen by far the youngest person to hold this coveted title. This is a rare show of confidence in the young people of our country – those I like to call the Uhuru Generation – just like you broke another barrier last year when you named Ms. Martha Karua the first woman Jurist of the Year.

I am aware that neither age nor gender should qualify or disqualify one for any office, position or title, least of all a human rights achievement award. However, in a country that has traditionally elevated old males sometimes far above their deserved status by virtue of their age and gender alone, the election of a woman or a relatively young man is an important symbolic assertion that Kenya belongs to all who live in it and who work to improve the lives of its people, young and old, male and female.

Second, although I do not myself know the exact criteria that led to your decision this year, it is clear that it was based in part on my contribution and that of my colleagues to the cause of democracy and human rights during the last three years while I was resident in South Africa. This is a recognition of the universality and indivisibility of our struggle and the fact that what matters is not where one is but what one stands for.

It is also an acknowledgement of the role of technology in advancing that struggle. For it is technology that has enabled me to reach countless Kenyans here and around the world with my writings and my view of the challenges facing us; and it is technology that has enabled us in South Africa to share what we were doing for our cause with many people here at home and throughout the world.

And yet it has to be said that we in Africa have fallen woefully behind in exploiting the potential of new technologies. The human rights movement has been at the forefront in using electronic mail and the Internet to advance our cause, but we have not done nearly enough. These new technologies offer almost unlimited potential in breaking down traditional barriers in a world without walls. While it is true that Africa faces many challenges of connectivity and high costs of communication, it is still the case that we are not exploiting what is already available to us. It is a question of mindset rather that access that needs most urgently to be addressed if we are to stake our claim to this heritage of humankind and to deploy it to tackle the twin challenges of poverty and underdevelopment. I would like to challenge us here to take the lead in this regard.

But as journalist and author Thomas L. Friedman reminds us in his excellent book on globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, technology, or its absence, is not the only variable in combating poverty and underdevelopment. How societies are governed remains the most important variable. Creating a stable political, legal and economic environment friendly to entrepreneurship and investment, in which people can start businesses and raise their productivity, is the precursor for effectively fighting poverty.

Nobel Prize economist Amartya Sen makes this clear in his book, Development as Freedom. He argues that freedom, the ability of a person to make decisions about his or her life, is not only the most efficient means for building a healthy, developed society, but also its ultimate goal. When you put assets in the hands of the poor in a politically distorted environment, not much happens. (And for that reason, we can pour all the money at our disposal into so-called poverty eradication initiatives, but without addressing the distortions in our political environment, we shall be wasting precious time and resources.)

But when we do summon up the courage and political will to create a reasonably stable and free socio-political environment, a few assets in the hands of the poor will go a long way towards combating underdevelopment and eradicating poverty. As Sen points out, there has never been a famine in a country that is democratic, has multi-party politics and a free media. “Political freedom,” Sen notes, “gives voice to the vulnerable sections of the population and provides them with the power to demand and receive support in times of emergency crisis.”

In recent years, we have watched neighbouring countries we once regarded as examples of ruin and degradation make great strides in improving the lot of their people, and we have publicly or privately wondered what went wrong with the Kenyan dream. It is not that Uganda has suddenly discovered a special gene that enables people to advance. Rather, Kenya has fallen behind in the globalization era because we have failed to put in place even the minimum political, economic and legal infrastructure to take advantage of globalization. Prosperity did not run away from us; we failed to make the choices that would encourage it to stay. Countries like Uganda, Poland and South Korea have made the right choices and reaped the benefits.

But what are the right choices, you ask, and do they include the massive retrenchments that are causing so much social dislocation? And where do we strike the balance between massive lay-offs on the one hand and, on the other, the old centralized planning, regulation and price controls that attempted to guarantee everyone a job at the expense of costly inefficiencies in the system, and that are now threatening to come riding on the back of an inevitable backlash?

The paradigm of a global free market has been called seriously into question all over the world and it would be premature to suggest that globalization will have the final say in regulating human affairs in this millennium. But for the foreseeable future, it is the defining socio-economic formation of our time.

Thus, while in the long run, we must work to promulgate a more just and inclusive world order, in the interim, we have to make difficult choices if we are to take advantage of the global free market paradigm. But the more difficult the choices we have to make, the more seriously we need to reach political consensus on the direction to take as a country. We cannot massively lay off people and then violently prevent them from expressing their anger and frustration as we did outside Harambee House last week. Reasonable people anywhere will only support that which they have had a part in deciding. That is why to attempt economic reform without fundamentally altering our political landscape to make it more inclusive and accountable is to put the plough before the ox. This will simply not work.

Nor am I here merely referring to the need for meaningful constitutional reform. Such reform is a necessary but not sufficient condition for realizing the fundamental changes of which I speak. Indeed the most sustainable constitution-making processes have been those where the people have risen up and asserted their rights, with the writing of the actual document coming at the tail end. Any effort to do the opposite in Kenya will be doomed to fail no matter who leads it. We can borrow or craft the best document in the world and make it our Basic Law, but until our people are sufficiently empowered to enforce their own rights, such a constitution shall be a document full of purpose and promise but signifying nothing.

For this reason, even in this age of globalization and technological advancement, the vital challenges that face us today are quite simple to grasp. In my view, they fall into three categories:

First, we must robustly embark upon the task of organizing the unorganized. I was once led to believe that the role of education was to enable us to speak for the voiceless; but I have since come to know that the best people to speak for the voiceless are the voiceless themselves. In this context then, the real challenge is to help the excluded and the marginalized to find their own voice and to articulate their own concerns, for this enables the people themselves to become the guarantors of their own liberty.

The second challenge is that of dragging our issues – all our issues – out into the public domain to enable us to deal with them as a society. The human rights movement has tended to be selective in choosing the issues to articulate partly based on convenience and practical considerations. But we cannot choose our battles only because they can be won. We must choose our battles because they must be fought. In this regard, we must place the rights of people with disability right up there with the right to political expression or to popular participation in constitution-making.

Thirdly, we need to be more robust in reclaiming public places for peaceful protest. In Kenya today, the right to peacefully demonstrate in public places is virtually non-existent. Indeed the very word demonstration has come to be associated in the minds of people with riot and violence.

And yet, no meaningful change can take place in society unless people are free to express their choices in public without fearing violence or victimization. This calls not only for law reform to guarantee this right, but a less insecure executive arm of the government and vigorous education of people across all cadres of our society on the value, philosophy and practice of non-violent direct action.

These are just some of the challenges that we must rise up to if we are to realize our vision of building a strong, free and united African country where liberty, human dignity and respect for the rights of all shall form the basis of social behaviour by citizen and the State alike. In meeting these challenges we must not prevaricate; in staying this course, we dare not fail.

I thank you.

NOT ALL CHRISTIANS OPPOSE KADHIS COURTS: An Open Letter to Christian Leaders in Kenya.

[In the run up to the August 2010 referendum on the Harmonized Draft Constitution, one of the contentious issues was the inclusion of Kadhis Courts in the draft. Despite the fact that the courts had always been a part of our Constitution since independence and were being retained largely as they were, a number of Christian denominations and church leaders denounced their inclusion and decided to campaign against the draft, eventually teaming up with politicians who opposed the draft constitution to vote No. In February 2010, I wrote an open letter to the Church leaders urging them to reconsider their position and support the new Constitution. This letter was also published in the daily press and on the website of the Committee of Experts which had drafted the Harmonized Draft Constitution.]

Nairobi,

9th February 2010.

Dear Fellow Christians,

I greet you all in the Name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I would like to introduce myself and for the avoidance of doubt to state upfront that I am a born again Christian. Baptized as an infant and confirmed as a teenager in the Anglican Church, I received Christ as my Lord and Saviour in my early twenties at a service at the Nairobi Pentecostal Church, Valley Road, and was water baptized a few years later at the Karura Community Chapel. My wife and I currently worship at the Nairobi Chapel where I serve on the Usher Board. However the views expressed in this letter are my own and do not represent the positions of any of the churches or organizations that I am associated with.

I hold degrees in law and theology, having received my legal education at the University of Nairobi and Oxford University and obtaining my MA in Theology in Christian Ministry Leadership from the Nairobi International School of Theology. I take pride in being a lawyer and a theologian because as John Witte says, Law helps to give society the structure, order and predictability it needs to survive while Religion helps to give the society the faith and the vision it needs to move forward.

I am proud of the rich heritage of the Church in Kenya and worldwide with regard to the fight for justice, good governance and human rights. The Church has indeed risen to the occasion in standing up against autocracy and dictatorship in the past. I am privileged to have been nurtured on the bosom of the Church having been brought up in a Christian home by Christian parents and attended Christian schools. Any criticism, therefore, that I have against the Church is based on the great love I have for the Church and I humbly beseech you to take this letter in the same spirit with which it has been written.

Given the background above, I have to admit that I have watched with increasing dismay and alarm as several respected Christian leaders from diverse denominations have expressed strong views against the inclusion of Kadhis courts in the Harmonized Draft Constitution. In your latest statement, published in the local dailies on 3rd February 2010 sub-titled ‘Entrench Islamic Sharia Law in the Constitution at Your Own Risk,’ you have demanded that Kadhis courts be removed from the Draft Constitution failing which “the Christian church in Kenya shall have no option but to reject it in total and vote NO.”

I have to say that I disagree with your position on this matter on historical, legal, theological, logical and moral grounds.

1. Historical objection

Your statement and your position ignore the fact that Kadhis courts have been a part of our Constitution since independence in 1963 and continue to be in the current Constitution. They are there to adjudicate on matters of personal law (marriage, divorce and inheritance) between parties who all profess the Muslim faith, which remains their jurisdiction in the harmonized draft constitution. Your view ignores the fact that the courts did not accidentally end up in the constitution but were a part of the negotiations between Jomo Kenyatta and the Sultan of Zanzibar which led to the 10 mile coastal strip being incorporated into the Republic of Kenya at independence.

There have been arguments that from the letters exchanged between Kenyatta and the Prime Minister of Zanzibar, the courts should have been confined to the coastal strip or that there was no intention for them to be put in the constitution. The first of these arguments is illogical, for if the same constitution guaranteed freedom of movement and settlement anywhere within a unitary state, it would not make sense to suggest that every time a Muslim had an issue of personal law to be adjudicated upon they would have go to the coast to have that done; and whatever the intention expressed or implied in the letters, the fact is that our founding fathers did sign onto the constitution which included the provision for Kadhis courts.

Since Kadhis courts were part of the agreement that made the ten mile coastal strip a part of independent Kenya, in all fairness, it logically follows that those of you arguing for their removal should be willing to abrogate the whole agreement and have the coastal strip revert to the sovereignty of Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania), for we cannot have our cake and eat it!

2. Legal objection

According to the law of treaties and under the international law principle of pacta sunt servanda, every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith. A party to the treaty cannot invoke provisions of its domestic law as justification for a failure to perform the treaty. In 1963, Kenya entered into a treaty with Zanzibar which is binding and must be performed. We cannot simply abrogate the treaty because of some people among us who claim that the inclusion of Kadhis courts in the constitution is part of a wider sinister Muslim plot to take over the world.

3. Theological objection

WWJD was a ubiquitous acronym in my day as a young Christian. We wore in on bracelets and necklaces, our T-Shirts and bumper stickers, we penned it in our books and scratched it on our walls, to remind ourselves that whenever we faced a dilemma in our spiritual walk, the answer was to be found in that simple question, What Would Jesus Do?

I have found myself reminded of these four simple letters lately as I have listened to the increasingly menacing voices of some church leaders whenever the question of the Kadhis courts has come up. The language being used in certain Christian radio stations and sermons in churches borders on hate speech and sectarian incitement. All sorts of conspiracy theories about Muslims planning to take over the country have spun out of control and the way many church leaders have chosen to engage in this matter is totally lacking in grace. But what would Jesus do?

First and foremost, Jesus never commissioned the Church to go and conquer territories and nations, nor to defend them by virtue of their numbers, including by threatening to vote to reject a constitution. It should not be forgotten that when Jesus came to Palestine in the First Century C.E., the whole province was under foreign Roman occupation but we do not see Jesus even once deciding to take on the colonial forces. Instead, He went about establishing the Kingdom of God by living a life wholly submitted to God the Father, and He left us the Great Commission: Go and make disciples of all nations. The making of disciples would be done “not by power and not by might but by My spirit, says the Lord.” This means that the Church would advance its mission through prayer, evangelism and a life of example, and not through threats, intimidation or conquest. This is just not the way of the cross.

Some of my Christian brothers and sisters have been heard to complain that the fact that Muslims have been buying real estate in Nairobi, especially in Eastleigh and South C, is another indicator, together with the issue of Kadhis courts, that this is part of a wider scheme to take over the country. But surely we cannot discriminate on the basis of religion as to who should own property where in the country. All Kenyans have the right to own property anywhere in the country. In any case, it is other Kenyans, including Christians, also in exercise of their rights, who are selling their property in the open market, to the Muslims. Again, from a purely biblical perspective, what would Jesus do?

In the garden of Gethsemane as the hour of his arrest and crucifixion drew near, Jesus told his disciples to “watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.” Instead, the disciples chose to go to sleep. When Jesus’ enemies finally came to arrest him, the sleepy disciples woke up and one of them instinctively reached for a sword and slashed the ear of one of the adversaries. Jesus rebuked him and restored the severed ear.

To the extent that some Christians regard Muslims as adversaries, then the Church has been asleep instead of ‘watching and praying.’ And suddenly we are waking up and reaching for the sword to engage in a way that is not becoming of the cross nor of the gospel of love nor of the message of reconciliation that we have been entrusted with.

Finally, some have argued that Kadhis courts ended up in our current constitution through an act of treachery on the part of the Muslims. This argument has no merit nor has any evidence been adduced to support the same. But even if for argument’s sake it was true that the Muslim community managed to somehow maneouvre and negotiate to their advantage when our original covenant was being crafted in the early 1960s, then the Bible clearly teaches that we should not casually attack them and seek to marginalize them simply because they happen to be a minority whom we do not like.

In this regard, I remind you of the Gibeonite deception in Joshua Chapter 9. The Gibeonites, who were among the people Joshua had been ordered to get rid of from the Promised Land, cleverly disguised themselves and came to Joshua pretending to have come from a distant country and persuaded Joshua to sign a treaty of peace with them, only to discover shortly thereafter that he had been tricked. Despite the temptation to attack the Gibeonites, Joshua restrained the Israelites because of the oath they had sworn to them. Indeed centuries later, when King Saul attacked the Gibeonites thereby going against Joshua’s five hundred year old oath, God avenged them by sending a three year famine on Israel (2 Samuel 21)

The Kadhis courts debate has echoes of the Gibeonite story. Our forefathers signed a treaty of peace with the Sultan of Zanzibar the provisions of which led to the incorporation of the 10 mile coastal strip into the Republic of Kenya in return for certain concessions to the Muslim community among which were the Kadhis courts to adjudicate on personal matters between persons professing the Islamic faith. Even if these courts were entrenched in the constitution through some act of trickery (which as I have argued they were not), it would still behoove us to respect them or risk judgment as Israel did when future generations felt they were not bound by the oath of their forefathers.

4. Logical objection:

The vehement opposition to Kadhis courts and the latest threat to reject the Draft Constitution in total and mobilize the Church to vote No in the forthcoming referendum does not make logical sense. As Kadhis courts are already contained in the current Constitution, voting No to a new constitution achieves nothing for the opponents of the courts since we are left back where we began with a constitution that still provides for the courts.

5. Moral objection:

Morally, I hasten to remind you that the alternative to a new constitutional order is the current constitution – the same constitution that we are all agreed has provided the framework for rampart corruption, tribalism, oppression, injustice, rabid poverty and inequality, which have all exploded into post-election violence; a constitution which if not replaced with a more just and equitable order, guarantees that this country will certainly not hold together for much longer.

Conclusion:

By threatening to derail yet again a process that has taken us two decades in the search for a new democratic constitutional order, not only will you be decidedly marching against the tide of history, you will be playing into the hands of those who seek to maintain the status quo and thereby to deny the majority of Kenyans the right and the responsibility to equitably share in the burdens and the benefits of belonging.

For these reasons, I humbly beseech you to prayerfully reconsider your position on the Kadhis courts in the Harmonized Draft Constitution.

Yours in Christ,

Njonjo Mue LL.B, MA (Th.)
Advocate
Feb 2010.

Uhuru Generation: Taking a Stand on High Ground!

[In the year 2000, Kenya Citizens Abroad (KCA) invited me to travel from Johannesburg, South Africa, where I was working with a human rights organization, to St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, to address the Annual Conference of KCA. The theme of the conference that year was 'Kenya in the 21st Century'. I used the occasion to challenge Kenya's young citizens (the Uhuru Generation) to step up to the plate and own the problems facing the country and to define a new vision for Kenya. This is a transcript of that speech.]

Uhuru Generation: Taking a Stand on High Ground!

By Njonjo Mue

Keynote address to the Annual Conference of the Kenya Community Abroad (KCA)  

St Paul, Minnesota, USA

30 June - 3 July 2000

Good evening fellow Kenyans. 

The voice of our generation has been silent for far too long. Tonight, I want to speak to you about our role in Kenya's reconstruction and transformation as well as our vision for the country we wish to build and pass on to those who come behind us.

Not very long ago, Kenya was proudly referred to as the 'Shining Star of the East'. A rare African showcase. It was a land where black and white lived together in peace; the economy was growing; the dignity of all was taken for granted, and we all knew a bit of what it was to be human -- to have food for our bodies, education for our minds, houses to live in and roads to travel on. We shared what we had equitably, and where it was not enough to go round, we ensured that there was equal opportunity to compete for access to the riches of  the land. We celebrated our strong but we also took care of our weak. For a while, the birthplace of humankind was also becoming the cradle of human hope.

But that was then.

To go to Kenya today is to descend into the valley of the shadow of death. Our country is in darkness in more ways than one. Death strikes with unnerving frequency and ruthless efficiency - on our roads, in our hospitals, in ethnic clashes, through mob violence, even through bombs targeted at other people. The walls we built to keep out the enemies of poverty, hunger and disease have all been torn down. God's children now huddle pitifully together, exposed to the elements of hopelessness, and vulnerable to the merciless chill of despair.

Today life in Kenya has become a meaningless search for meaning. Death is the only certainty we know – death of the body and spirit long before the death of the body. Kenya closely resembles Ezekiel's valley of dry bones in Ezekiel Chapter 37. For we are surrounded by dry bones scattered over a patched and thirsty land. They include massive corruption and looting of the resources of the land by their custodians, tribalism, collapsed systems, urban decay, rural underdevelopment, and so on.

We are all well aware of what ails our land, so I shall not dwell on it. Instead, allow me to focus on the two realities that we must confront.

Defining the Uhuru Generation:

I wish to remind you that throughout this discussion, I am an emissary of the Uhuru Generation. So I better take a moment and define who I am talking about:

The Uhuru Generation is the generation of women and men born after the midnight hour of 12 December 1963. They are the true daughters and sons of Kenya having been born in Kenya after the country joined the family of sovereign nations in contrast to those naturalized citizens like Daniel Arap Moi who had to give up the citizenship of Empire when Kenya was born in 1963.

Ours is the generation in whose name the struggle for independence was waged. But we now find ourselves impoverished and disinherited, aliens and sojourners in the land of our birth. We are the inheritors of an uneasy peace. But despite forming the overwhelming majority of Kenya's population today, we have largely been excluded from taking our full part in shaping the fortunes of our country.

Not only are we the majority of Kenya's masses, we also shoulder a disproportionate burden of Kenya's losses. Young people today bear the brunt of poverty, unemployment, HIV/AIDS, failed social services and collapsed infrastructure. Not only has the political class stolen from us the tangible little luxuries of this life, they have deigned to take from us that which only the Creator can give and take by robbing us of the intangible qualities that define us as humans -–like hope, godly ambition, genuine peace of heart and mind, and the ability to dream of a better tomorrow. We squint as we gaze at the horizon trying to make out the light of our new dawn but all we can see is darkness unending.

But it has not always been this dark. For across the sky of our long night of lost opportunities, there have been a few scattered stars. They have twinkled briefly to illuminate our collective path before flickering out again. We would not lament their demise had they not etched themselves on the edges of our consciousness. The generation for which I speak is not ungrateful for the contributions of those gone before us. We are beholden to them. In a word, we are not ungrateful to all the women, men and children who have given their lives in the search for peace and the struggle for human dignity in our homeland of Kenya. We celebrate their courage and their sacrifice.

But great though their accomplishments are, we must hasten to remind ourselves that a growing nation cannot afford to rest on its laurels, for its children will not find solace in its glorious past. We must confront present realities in order to march confidently into our common future.

We cannot continue to play second fiddle in the country that we own, while people who have clearly demonstrated that they have no stake in our future run it to the ground. Young people cannot sit by and let others define them or their mission on their own terms.

A country divided - Kenya's apartheid:

A country divided cannot stand. I am currently working in South Africa and it is a very good case study. I have heard a lot of people mistakenly saying that South Africa gained her independence in 1994. This is not true. South Africa gained independence in 1910. That was the year that the Union of South Africa was formed after the Anglo-Boer war resulted in the departure of the British colonialist. But after the exit of the colonial rulers, a tiny minority of South Africa's population took the reigns of power and systematically oppressed the majority. This culminated in the introduction of formal apartheid rule in 1948 when the National Party government came to power. And as we all know majority rule was finally achieved in 1994 after a long and bloody struggle.

Kenya still yearns for her 1994.

British colonists left in 1963, but we have not as yet achieved majority rule. Like South Africa, a minority group took the reigns of power after independence. The same group continues to oppress the majority to this day, with a few comings and goings. The only difference is that unlike South Africa, the protagonists in Kenya are not defined by race. They are defined by class, age and gender. A tiny minority of rich, old men led by Daniel Moi continues to ride roughshod over the majority of the people - mainly women and the Uhuru Generation.

But we should not merely point to the government, for it is by no means the only culprit. I am referring to the establishment as a whole. For just like apartheid in South Africa extended its tentacles to every facet of society, so too Kenya's minority of rich old males extends its rule everywhere, including the political Opposition, the institutions of learning, business, the church and the media. And to merely ask Moi to leave office is equivalent to asking F. W. De Klerk to quit government while leaving the whole apartheid machine intact. Like Apartheid in South Africa, Kenya's Geriatric Oligarchy cannot be reformed. It must be dismantled.

That is why the message that must go out of St. Paul tonight, and reverberate in the ears of Mr. Moi and Mr. Kibaki; Mr. Nyachae and Mr. Saitoti; Mr. Muite and Mr. Raila, is as simple as it is profound. GENTLEMEN, END THIS APARTHEID NOW!

But for those who might find the apartheid paradigm uncomfortable, let me approach the same conclusion from another direction. When a monarch dies leaving an heir who is too young to rule, a Regent is appointed to oversee the affairs of state until the heir becomes of age. Well, I submit to you that the time has come for the regents appointed on our behalf in 1963 to get out of the way, for the rightful heirs to Kenya's throne have finally come of age.

But will we throw all old men into the sea?

But, one might ask, what about our tradition and the place of honour it accords to elders? Are we throwing all that away? The answer is no. We are not advocating that we throw all old men into the sea (though their performance lately has caused the thought to cross our minds). We will continue to value their wisdom and their experience. We are not departing from tradition, but enforcing it. For Africans never did send their old and their frail into the battlefield. We listened keenly to their whispers of wisdom. But it is the young that must go to the front line and face the enemy.

What enemies do we face today?

We face the challenges of the information revolution - what sense does it make to send someone who has never used a computer to the frontline? We face the challenge of globalization - What sense does it make to promote somebody to the rank of General by virtue only of the fact that he studied economics at the LSE in the late fifties? We face extinction through HIV and AIDS - what sense does it make to let a conservative old man who cannot mention the word 'sex' without biting his tongue command our troops? We face humiliation as a people and indignity as a race - What sense does it make to prop up Lieutenants by virtue only of the fact that their colour is acceptable to those to whom we extend our begging bowls?

Not only does it not make sense to recruit from among the ranks of the old and infirm, we should also be careful to recruit soldiers with demonstrated loyalty to our cause. For we have been jilted for far too long and cheated far too often. We have had our hearts broken when we found suitors who had vowed to remain forever faithful to our cause in bed with those ravishing us.

But even though we are a hurting people today, I must state emphatically that we are not a desperate people; what's more, we much wiser for our experiences. Consequently, we shall no longer take our latter day saints at their word. You cannot sup with the devil one day and then anoint yourself our savior the next.

And so even as we nurse our wounds, we need to marshal supreme confidence and demonstrate to the world that Kenyans and Africans are not the children of a lesser god. We cannot do so without the wisdom and experience of the elders, but they must not purport to fight the battles of our time for us.That, we must do for ourselves.

Without a vision...

I suppose by now you are all thinking that I am being a bit tough on the old folk and blaming them for everything. Well, not quite. The last dry bone in Kenya's wasteland of lost opportunities is one for which we all share a responsibility. It is the bone of a lack of a vision. To what does our government aspire beyond perpetuating its own stay in power? What does the opposition work for beyond trying to capture that power? What are we as a people working for beyond mere survival?

In short what is the vision for our country?

In the history of our nationhood, we have often substituted platitudes for vision. In the 1970's and 80's the government promised that there would be electricity for all by the year 2000; water for all by the year 2000; education for all by the year 2000; health for all by the year 2000.

Well, 2000 is halfway gone and on all scores we are worse off than we were when these empty promises were made. Like all the empty promises of yesteryear, the latest round, including that of industrialization by 2020, are just hollow platitudes.

But it behooves our generation to define a new vision for our country and to draw a roadmap to a new dispensation. We cannot wait for the government to do this for us. We must somehow find the courage to forge a new consensus for the country that we wish to build and bequeath to those who come behind us. We might be able to draw some inspiration from our past achievements, few though they are, but we cannot hope to find the answer for our tomorrows in our yesterdays.

But why is vision important?

There are two main reasons. First, the Bible tells us that  'without a vision the people perish'. Theologians tell us that the word for 'perish' in the original Hebrew does not actually mean physical death. It means that people go naked and are impoverished. But one does not need to understand Hebrew to see that this is exactly the state we are in today. We can blame our woes on any number of people - Parliament blames Biwott for the power rationing; Biwott blames Kibaki and Nyachae; Nyachae says Moi should take responsibility; Moi says he is not a rainmaker!

Every time a catastrophe strikes us. We can round up all the usual suspects - Moi, Kenyatta, constitutional reform, colonial rule, world economic order, the weather, my neighbour's tribe, your sister's gender, and so on.

But I came all the way from Johannesburg to St. Paul today, to let you know that we are doomed to go round in circles - to repeat the same mistakes, to play the blame game, to wallow in the valley of despair - until we apprehend the real culprit: Our own loss of a dream; our own lack of vision.

The second reason why vision is vital is this: Without a future, human beings are programmed to go back to their past. Every time the children of Israel lost sight of the Promised Land they demanded of Moses that he take them back to Egypt. A man who sees no future in his marriage will return to his multiple partners. And ask any police investigator where they go to look for a convict who has escaped from jail - they go to all the places where he used to hang out.

Tragically, we see many examples of that in Kenya today. Children are doing homework by candlelight tonight, families eat in darkness in scenes reminiscent of the 1960s. We have also taken to appointing white Kenyans to important positions, not necessarily because they are competent, but in a cynical attempt to win favour from our former colonizers who instinctively trust their own kind more than they trust us. Even more tragically, I have heard intelligent people ask, "If only the British would come back and colonize us!" 

Without a future, we have gone back to our past. Without a vision, the people are perishing.

But we must never give up hope. It is not too late to define a new vision for our country. And this is the vision of the Uhuru Generation:

We shall build a strong, united and prosperous African country comprising a diverse multicultural society, with a vibrant economy providing equal opportunity for individual and communal growth; and where freedom, human dignity and respect for the rights of all will be the basis of social behaviour by the citizen and the State alike.

But what will separate our vision from the 'by the year 2000' platitudes I spoke about earlier?

By constantly remembering that vision without action is fiction; by developing programmes that are carefully design to make our vision a reality, and by moving beyond merely talking about our problems to actually individually owning them and mobilizing our own physical and intellectual resources to reclaim our land of promise.

And of vital importance, we must remember that we will never attain our vision in the sense that we can sit down and rest. We must forever keep it ahead of us so that it can define our purpose, set our boundaries and parameters and test our character, individually and collectively. And when the Uhuru Generation itself becomes older, and if we have been faithful in staying on the path, we shall not fear to hand over to the next generation to continue to build upon the promise.

I wish to end where I began, with the Prophet Ezekiel at the valley of the dry bones:

"Young woman, young man, can these bones live again?"

The answer lies in the eye of the Beholder

For if we focus only on the legacy bequeathed us

By those gone before us

A legacy of wasted years and lost days

Of greed and corruption, vice and violence

Of shattered lives and broken dreams

Then we can only but see dry bones

At the bottom of the desolate valley

Of our painful yesterdays.

But if we lift up our eyes unto the hills

And focus our gaze

On the distant horizons

Of our new tomorrows

If we defy the odds and rebuild together

If we make God our closest ally

And vision our guiding principle

Then we shall see our homeland of Kenya

Once again becoming

A heritage of splendor.

God bless you

God bless the Uhuru Generation

And God bless the Republic of Kenya

I thank you.