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Our leaders need to reinvent
themselves
Story by EDWARD BURI
10. Feb. 2008
About eight weeks ago, the ingredients were all in place to call
Kenya a country to watch.
But today, our heads are bowed in shame. Internally, there are
questions galore, the first being “Is this us?” And the answer is
as straightforward and is also three words: “It is us.” Some
amongst us are proud of the state of the nation because evil is
who they are, and evil is what they wanted.
But there are many Kenyans who are allergic to evil, who would
rather have and promote the good, the sober, and the upright.
The future of our country lies in the strength and faith of these
Kenyans - these people who will not put up with the blinding smoke
of another torched house.
Who will resist the poisoned arrow that threatens to send another
household into unnecessary mourning. Who will stand in harm’s way
as they insist that their fellow Kenyans need not desert their
stations of genuine livelihood to head for the confusing
destination called “ancestral homes.”
THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY LIES IN the minds of the Kenyans who
will not put up with the manipulation of self-proclaimed patriotic
national leaders who in reality are devoted factional leaders.
Acts accomplished by a courageous evil will not be undone by a
cowardly good. To wrestle the destiny of this country from evil
hands, the cardinal virtue of courage is inevitable. Some
perspectives would be helpful as we reconstruct the hope that will
guide our acts of reconstruction.
It will go down in the chronicles of Kenya’s history that the
first accomplishment of the present legislators was chaos, a kind
of chaos that set on fire the granaries of our past hard-earned
gains as if it were a worthless piece of tattered cloth. With such
a chaotic accomplishment, these legislators are to many Kenyans
symbols of antagonism.
THE KIND OF DAMAGE THAT KENYA HAS suffered does not need
dramatised peace, it needs peace itself. It is therefore immoral
to conduct circuits of peace rallies that are mere political
soothings. That old model will not work. Kenyans’ hearts have
dropped too low for heads to wave their hands mindlessly. In our
circumstance, the true symbol of hope is not the one who talks it.
It is the one who has the courage to actually embody it. Our
leaders will need to reinvent themselves if they have any ambition
to be symbols of hope.
It is fitting to state that being a symbol of hope is not a
preserve of the politicians. Constructively passionate persons
from the business sector, the religious sector - all sectors and
even from the general citizenry should rise up at community and
national levels to enlarge the sorry number of believable peace
symbols.
One of the characteristics of Kenyans is that we have a short
memory - but a short memory must not translate to a shallow
ingestion of such experiences as we have gone through following
the election. Our memory should be short enough to thrust us on
our way ahead within the shortest time, but long enough to form an
integral part of the wisdom that informs our acts in the future.
In the movie Hotel Rwanda, the hotel manager who waited for the
Belgian army to come save the Rwandans is devastated on realising
that long-awaited soldiers came only to aid the evacuation of the
Westerners. In his bitterness he criticises himself and says, “I
have no memory, I have no history.”
If he had remembered that these were the same people who had
exploited them for so long, he would have been more creative in
finding salvation for his people. If we are to build a hope to
guide our reconstruction, then it must be informed a lot by our
memory, our history and its lessons. This way, our hope gains a
helpful pro-active dimension.
There is such a thing as destructive spirituality. Most of the
players in the current chaos have been linked to certain spiritual
connections. They are known to appeal to some celestial power to
whom they pay homage. The hope that these players have is rooted
in the capacity of their spiritual source to perform. While
spirituality is part of humanness, a spirituality that corrodes
the love for the neighbour and instead instils a murderous hatred
is at the very best suspect.
THE HOPE THAT WILL ESCORT US EFFECTIVELY on the path of
integration is one that has love and peace at its core. In the
pre- and post-election situation, we have witnessed with saSNess
religious institutions compromised from their identity as issuers
of virtue to being supporters of parties and persons. Where these
watersheds of spirituality are so polluted, the moral conscience
of society dies.
In their death, they were tribalised and came alive as sponsors of
hatred. The protectors of the people became their killers. The
embracers of all became discriminators. If these organisations
intend to play a believable role in reconstruction of our society,
they will not redeem themselves by a mere reorganisation. It will
take a courageous conversion.
Only such a rebirth will restore their stature as agents of
authentic hope. A Jewish scholar and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote
The Dignity of Difference. Coded in this title is a philosophy
that each Kenyan should appropriate and each politician propagate
- that difference should not be a ground for demeaning the other.
Rather it should be a basis of honouring them. Our minds have been
saturated with such a negative view of the tribe that we require a
baptism to make good steps into a real reconstruction.
The one place where cultures are celebrated is in the National
Music Festivals where people from different communities
unhesitatingly wear and showcase the cultures of others. There you
see a team from Eastern province present a piece from a culture in
Western province. They sing their songs, dance their music, even
burst into wild celebration on victory. If we together
courageously and creatively laboured to transfer this spirit into
our daily lives, then the neighbour’s culture becomes not a source
of pain, but a channel of joy.
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