Looking back in the years of monoparty monopoly one sighs a sigh of relief at the relish at which Kenya can yarn political parties at night and by day sing to its tune. It is quite a pity to think that this is what saba saba was to stand for. If saba saba was to chuck Moi out of power then it took it 14 years to do so. If its aim was to get a new constitution then you had to add 6 more years to the fourteen to achieve that end. If the aim of that Kamukunji meeting was to put Kenya into democracy, then they had never anticipated this.
Saba saba
can be looked at as stone thrown by a bird to kill a bird, when that bird was never killed then the interests of the birds to be killed were united with
those of the bird that was to kill. If you do not know saba saba that I am
referring to, the let me let you on it; this was a day that the campaigners for
democracy and against the queue voting came together to fight against the dictatorial
Moi regime. They organized a mass meeting at Kamukunji to protest this
violation but they were in for a rude shock since the government had organized a nice
treat for them.
Many of
those whose participated in the July 7 1990 kamukunji rally were brutally
beaten, detained and some were even killed under mysterious circumstances. As
we celebrate that day, let us ask ourselves, has Kenya achieved what the civil
rights activists have been fighting for over the years? Have we gotten that
liberation we have been singing about?
Are civil rights activists busy bodies whose main interest is to gain
wealth and maybe political mileage?
These are
some of the stony hard questions we got to contemplate since most of those who
were in the forefront in advocating for our rights (which we can not fight for)
are successful politicians.
One thing
that more than makes me wonder is that, this reformers of the early 1990’s have
become anti-reformers. The ideologies they stand for are in most occasions than
not retrogressive and if they are not, then they are non-progressive. Their
agenda is more or less political. Their methods theoritical and their
development agenda parasitic.
They claim
to be better than the former yet the greed in them makes them more than
vultures. My question is, should we allow such people to occupy public offices?
And if not, how then can we the public who suffer at their mercy ensure that
they do not turn into hungry vultures that are ready to devour us?
Kenya is
steadfastly developing with politics as her main undoing. She has her
enterprising citizens working all day to ache a living and also painfully feed
the greedy vultures who are her politicians. Even those who protest against the
daylight corruption are still sweating out.
Therefore as
we celebrate Saba Saba and reminisce the torture we (some of us) went through
to make sure that at least out of the forty steps we made backward seven were
forward, we are not subjecting our selves into slavery.
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