Incoming regime should reconstruct our values
By PD columnist, September 2, 2022Something is gnawing at the soul of this nation relentlessly pulling it down and that something is not technology nor is its systems. Kenya has heavily invested in these exogenous elements of her social structure.
The country gave the world the pioneer money transfer system, created technology hubs across the land, improved governance structures through the enactment of a constitution in 2010, and created institutions to waterproof cracks, but so far nothing doing.
There is a story told about the great wall of China. The wall had never been breached except at its most endogenic point – people. While the wall is solid those who penetrated it did not need to chip through the stones but just find people who could be compromised.
The contradictions in the Kenyan system are galore. We seek to foolproof our technology system while, at the same time, working tirelessly to undermine it. We celebrate implementing a world-class legal framework and spend the rest of the time emasculating it. We trust the government to print our currency locally but can’t trust it to do the same with the ballot paper.
This breakdown is not a pastime of a section of Kenyan society, but rather a national obsession. Our elections bring out the worst in us. To have in place a foolproof electoral system we set up a rigorous mechanism for recruiting officials, raised the remuneration of those officials so that they are not corruptible, invested in technology to make the process transparent, but to use the words of one of the election participants, the election officials seize the opportunity to auction the outcome to the highest bidder.
In introspection, we must turn and look inward, and as Chinua Achebe would ask, where did the rain begin to beat us? But maybe that is not our question; our question may very well be where is the rain beating us? And the answer seems to be everywhere!
So, what institutions would the nation fall back on to save its soul? Most would have suggested that religion or faith is the answer. Unfortunately, in our case religion or faith is as much a problem as the rest of the software.
It is to the men and women of the clothe, versed in the sanctified vocabulary that the major players in our national catastrophe retreat to before they engage in their most nefarious activities. With a God now domesticated by some, Kenyans have succeeded in making God part of their degenerate plans, however, far from religion, those plans may seem to be.
This partisan God reduced to the level of Kenyan craftiness, is incapable of working miracles on his own, instead must rely on the industriously of mortals, and then move in to take credit. Sad to say but religion does not have an answer for our national maladies.
Our professionals are no help either. Professionalism brings with it a code of conduct, a code of ethics and a clearly defined way of executing tasks and behaving in public. Kenya leads in the region in having some of the highest-graded professionals.
But one has to listen to our professionals’ exchange banter on social media regarding critical national issues to register that indeed, our professionals are empty suits.
If religion and professionals will not help, maybe it is time to turn to culture. We come from traditions that have withstood the test of time, nurtured us, and given society its foundation.
But again, here hope is dashed when it is understood how these institutions have been captured and neutered by the very professionals. When the council of elders rise to make their opinion known, it is seldom the wisdom of the ages but the pedestrian input of the corrupt forces of society.
Kenya must reinvent herself. The challenge of the next administration may not be national construction, but the construction of the soul of the nation, the national software, to develop a value system that hopefully will hold the levers of society together. The challenge is how the reinvention will take place.
—The writer is the dean, School of Communication, Daystar University