The public good need not come with personal pain

It was heartbreaking to see mothers wailing at City Mortuary for their sons who had been shot by the police during the protests sparked by the controversial Finance Bill, 2024, which the President has since said he has withdrawn. It is painful for parents to bury their children, especially where the victims carried the hopes of better prospects for their families.

Equally sad, for me, was seeing a young woman weeping outside her phone shop on Ronald Ngala Street which was looted and gutted during the protests. I imagined that she had probably taken a loan to stock it up, that she had children whose upkeep depended on income from that shop, that she had parents upcountry who were looking up to her for a stipend.

When Kenyans debated and passed the Constitution in 2010, these are the scenarios they were hoping would become history, but, unfortunately, they have become more the rule rather than the exception. The result is that young Kenyans are being killed in protests when it is possible to engineer change without police having to fire bullets and killing the aspirations of the youth.

True, nation-construction is a difficult undertaking. Though it calls for people to make sacrifices, those sacrifices do not have to include loss of lives and destruction of livelihoods. As a people, therefore, it is important that we make a conscious choice to resolve our differences using non-violent means to the greatest extent possible. That way, the public good will not have to be gained through personal pain. That was the way of the past; it is not how we should shape our future.

In the process of building this country, robust differences will surely emerge, as they did with regard to the finance bill. This is as it should be, because the sharing of public resources is a delicate matter that ought to be handled with utmost sensitivity given that there are regions and demographics that have historically been marginalised and which now feel that they too deserve a seat at the table.

The historical failure to right this wrong was bound to boil over at one point or another. It just happened to be triggered by the finance bill. But this crisis presents the political class and citizens with an opportunity to rethink and reshape public discourse about how the affairs of this country must be run. It can no longer be business as usual.

However, it is important that all the actors involved resist the temptation to act extra-constitutionally. This has been one of the biggest historical challenges that Kenya has had to endure. The Constitution is supreme at all times, not just when it is convenient. And this is a message that the government – and especially law enforcement agencies – as well as citizens ought to be constantly reminded about because this is what holds the country together.

This Constitution also provides mechanisms for managing political, economic and other conflicts on the first and subsequent instances. And it stipulates the rights and responsibilities of all involved. To reach our common goals and in the pursuit of the public good, we ought to avoid the temptation of limiting freedoms to achieve conformity, as attractive as this may look and sound in the short term and in the heat of the moment.

The curve of justice should always bend upwards and forward. This is the guiding principle of nation-construction. As such, police must find non-lethal ways of dealing with protesters. But this also means that those who organise demonstrations have a responsibility to ensure they are not infiltrated by criminal elements. In the same breath, the idea of burning or destroying private property to enforce conformity of thought in the pursuit of the public good should be discouraged and punished if the country is to avoid sliding into lawlessness and the dictatorship of the masses.

— The writer is the Editor-in-Chief of the Nairobi Law Monthly and Nairobi Business Monthly