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.