|
OPEN LETTER TO MR. KIVUITU
Grieving for Kenya
New America Media, News Feature, Shailja Patel
Posted: Feb 02, 2008
Editor's Note: Award-winning Kenyan poet, playwright, and
theatre artist, Shailja Patel, is a founding member of Kenyans for
Peace With Truth and Justice, a coalition of over 40 legal,
governance and human rights organizations in Kenya, as well as
individual Kenyans, working towards sustainable peace and
electoral justice in Kenya. In this no-holds-barred blog titled,
“An Open Letter to Samuel Kivuitu, chair of Kenya’s electoral
commission," Patel pours out her grief over what is happening in
her home country.
Mr. Kivuitu,
We've never met. It's unlikely we ever will. But, like every other
Kenyan, I will remember you for the rest of my life.
You had a mandate, Mr. Kivuitu. To deliver a free, fair and
transparent election to the people of Kenya. You had five years to
prepare, a tremendous pool of resources, skills, technical support,
to draw on. You had the trust of 37 million Kenyans.
On December 27th, a record 65 percent of registered Kenyan voters
rose early as 4 a.m. to vote. Queued for up to 10 hours, in the
sun, without food, drink, toilets. As results came in, we cheered
when 20 powerful ministers lost their parliamentary seats. The
voters of Rift Valley threw out the three sons of Daniel Arap Moi,
despot who looted Kenya for 24 years. The country rejected the
mind-blowing corruption, human rights abuses, callous dismissal of
Kenya's poor that characterized the Kibaki administration.
But Kibaki wasn't going. When it became clear that you were
announcing doctored vote tallies, instead of those confirmed the
constituencies, there was a sudden power blackout at Kenyatta
Conference Centre, where returns were being announced. Hundreds of
GSU (General Service Unit) paramilitaries marched in. Ejected all
media except the government mouthpiece, Kenya Broadcasting
Corporation. Fifteen minutes later, you declared Kibaki President.
Thirty minutes later, we watched, sickened, as you handed the
announcement to Kibaki, on the lawns of State House. The Chief
Justice, was already waiting, fully robed, to hurriedly swear him
in. ?
As the Kenya Chapter of the International Commission of Jurists
rescinds your Jurist of the Year award, as the Law Society of
Kenya strikes you from their Roll of Honor, what goes through your
mind?
Do you think of 300,000 Kenyans displaced? Thousands trapped in
police stations, churches, across the country? Without food, water,
blankets? Of fields ready for harvest, razed? Granaries filled
with rotting grain, because no one can get to them? Of Nairobi
slum residents ringed by GSU and police, denied emergency relief?
I bet you haven't made it to Jamhuri Park yet. But I'm sure you
saw pictures of poor Americans, packed like battery chickens into
stadiums, when Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Imagine that in
Nairobi, Mr. Kivuitu. 5,000 Kenyans, crammed into a giant
makeshift refugee camp. Our own Hurricane Kivuitu-Kibaki, driven
by fire, rather than floods. By organized militia rather than
crumbling levees.
Imagine grief, Mr. Kivuitu. Grief so deep, it shreds the muscle
fibres of your heart. Violation that grinds down your organs,
forces remnants through your kidneys, to piss out in red water.
Multiply by every Kenyan who has watched a loved one slashed to
death. Whose child lies, killed by police bullets, in mortuaries
of Nairobi, Kisumu, Eldoret. Who ran sobbing from burning home or
church. Every woman, girl, gang-raped.
Meanwhile, the man you named President cowers in State House,
ringed by rapacious power brokers. Smoke rises from torched
swathes of Rift Valley, gutted city of Kisumu. The Red Cross
predicts imminent cholera in Western Kenya. Containers pile up at
the Port of Mombasa. Ships, unable to unload cargo, leave still
loaded. Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Southern Sudan, the DRC, all
dependent on Kenyan transit for fuel and vital supplies, grind to
a halt.
A repressive regime rolls out its machinery of oppression. Who
knew our police force had so many sleek, muscled, excellently
trained horses, to mow down protestors? Who guessed that in a city
of perennial water shortages, we had high-powered water cannons to
terrorize Kenyans off the streets?
In this terrible time, I work with the most brilliant, principled
Kenyans of my generation. We organize, analyze, strategize,
mobilize. I marvel at the sheer collective volume of trained
intelligence, of professional skill. At the ability to rise above
personal tragedy - families hostage in war zones, friends killed,
homes overflowing with displaced relatives - to envisage solutions.
I think: ?Is this what we have trained all our lives for? To spend
the next two decades cleaning up this epic catastrophe? Caused by
old men who have already sucked Kenya dry, yet will cling to power
until they die?
You know these people too, Mr. Kivuitu. The idealists who took
seriously the words we sang as schoolchildren, about building the
nation. Some worked closely with you. Called you friend. You know
of the decades of struggle, bloodshed, faith, that created this
fragile beautiful thing we called the "democratic space in Kenya."
So imagine the ways we engage with the unimaginable. We coin new
similes:
Lie low like a 16A (the missing electoral tally forms)
We wonder if a Red Cross Special Committee for the Resettlement of
Displaced Presidents and Ministers might resolve our crisis.
We joke about the Kivuitu effect - which turns internationalists,
pan-Africanists, into patriots who cry at the words of our
national anthem.
….justice be our shield and defender.?May we dwell in unity, peace
and liberty. ?Plenty be found within our borders.
We cry in private. In public, we mourn through irony, persistent
humor and action. We tell the stories that aren't in the press.
The retired general in Rift Valley sheltering 200 displaced
families on his farm. The Muslim Medical Professionals offering
free treatment to anyone injured in political protest. We
challenge, repeatedly, wearily, international media labels of "tribal
warfare,” for audiences that know Africa only through Hollywood.
I wish you'd thought of those people, when you betrayed us. Drawn
on their courage, integrity, clarity, when your own failed you.
Had the imagination to enter into the dreams, of 37 million
Kenyans.
But, as you've probably guessed by now, Mr. Kivuitu, this isn't
really a letter to you. It’s an attempt to put words to what words
cannot capture. To mourn what is too immense to mourn. What can
only be lived, moment by moment. A clumsy groping beyond the word
'heartbreak.' This is a howl of anguish and rage. A love letter to
a nation. This is a long low keening for my country.
Shailja Patel
Shailja blogs for KPTJ at
www.mshale.com
. Her personal website is
www.shailja.com
.
|
