It’ s Our Country, Stupid!
Open your mouth in Kenya and
you’ ll get killed. Open your mouth wide and you’ ll get killed again. That has been the trend
since independence and it has
been carried through decades
and regimes with unabated
abandon. Count the number of
people whose assassinations were politically motivated and
you will run out of fingers
before you are quarter way
through. That is how bad it has
been. Not so any more, for
there is a new mouth in town! And it belongs to the
government! “Gaga! There is a backstreet university offering PhDs in child
speech and lies. That is where I
wasted time and money studying
instead of arranging stones
along the road to Kamiti where I
should be jailed for lying to people. Truth does not exist in
my vocabulary and if it does,
then I have never used it. I am
a liar by profession and my
foreign experience includes
calling my friend from the West to lie to Kenyans about Mijingo
and wasting time in the same
Western country shooting Cobra
Squad which has since been
considered by Brad Pitt and
Steven Spielberg for conversion into a true Hollywood cartoon
for blind and deaf children. I can
go on and on about my CV but I
will stop here.” A fool is wise until he opens his
mouth, how true? Thursday
afternoons are horror-movie
time in Kenya. Why? Just tune
into any news-channel and
watch a grown mouth lying to you in your face. First, he
ignores those journalists who
ask him the real questions and
then proceeds to give a whole
shebang of good news to his
employers. You expect people with PhDs to behave better but
this mouth is different. Ask him
questions and his answers will be
idiotic. Are we judging mouth too
much? “But Sir, I am in form one?” That would have been the best
answer this mouth would have
given to the person who asked
to employ him. Scene one:
Remember 2006 when Barack
Obama came to Kenya and rightfully disparaged the
government’ s efforts at fighting corruption? What
followed? This mouth called a
press conference and derided
Obama calling him a junior person
in pecking order whose words
were as inconsequential (as his). Kuffour just came over for tea.
Verbatim: They [Kufuor and
Kibaki] are age-mates and
friends and Kufuor is coming to
have a cup of tea with him. “ A gentle giant leaves his country,
the Gold Coast, to come to a
bloody and anarchic country for
tea?! Really?! How blessed are
we! The worst words ever
muttered by the government spokesman were in 2007, just
after the bloodletting had begun
in earnest. “It is normal for Kenyans to fight after every
election. So we expect this war
to continue for two or three
days and then things will be
back to normal.” He reasoned according to his wisdom, or the
lack of it. However, some of his
utterances have been nothing
short of shocking: “We have not yet reached a Somali like situation to allow
mediators to come to our
country,”he said. This was at the beggining of the post-
election violence in the country.
After a whole week of killings
and looting, the spokesman was
not willing to just admit that
there was indeed a crisis in Kenya. Hearing such things make
me wish that the Hague could
withdraw his right to speak and
include him in the envelope.
Maybe he thought this was
another episode in that failed eyesore called Cobra Squad.
What were we waiting for then?
To become a failed state then
rush to the donors for help and
aid? “We are in the process of putting together a team of
experts well versed in the
necessary required areas so
that they can join their
counterparts from other
countries participating in the inquiry“. Ask any students of English
what that statement means and
you will see them drenched in
sweat, scratching their heads
and flipping through Oxford and
Miriam-Webster trying to find any sense in it. Yet the
spokesman said it, in the eye of
the media. Whatever he meant,
we will know on judgement day. “It went beyond Prof. Alston’ s mandate and does not
encourage dialogue and appears
to have been made in bad
faith,” he said. Ask any Kenyan who witnessed the brutal police
in action after the violence and
you will find that the spokesman
lives in denial and hates the
light. Some of the policemen
even confessed to having received shoot-to-kill orders
from their bosses, yet some
death-outsider still claims that
there were no police-instigated
deaths last year? How sad? “The government’ s track record to reform is 90%”. This was overkill and ought not to
have been published in our
press. I lack words. This is an excerpt from an
article that appeared in a South
African paper after the killings
of two activists. “Kamau Kingara, director of the Oscar
Foundation, which runs free legal
aid clinics for the poor, and its
programmes coordinator, John
Paul Oulu, were shot in a busy
Nairobi street near the presidential residence on
Thursday evening. Only a few
hours earlier a government
spokesperson, Alfred Mutua, had
publicly accused their
organization of being a fundraising front for the feared
Mungiki criminal gang”. You wonder the kind of reputation
we have among our own African
countries? It is skewed. A few
minutes later and the "Right
Honourable" is out and loud
condemning the killings. I thought he was in the same government
that had vowed to deal
ruthlessly with the same outfit?
Actually who is the government?
And you, spokesman, who's your
daddy? Who do you speak for? Who tells you all that "gugu
gaga hu ha" that you shout all
the way from Nairobi to Mijingo?
I wonder. "They are just waking up at 10
o'clock, eating eggs and
sausages, giving interviews and
planning how to disrupt people's
lives," government spokesperson
Alfred Mutua told reporters. Also an excerpt from the same
paper, and shows what he said
when he was asked on his take
on the opposition leaders during
the hard times last year. With
comments like these, violence was bound to continue, and
indeed, the infamous mass
actions were called the next
day! Government spokesperson Alfred
Mutua accused Odinga of trying
to "use the back door to gain
power" by refusing to negotiate
with the president or use the
courts to contest the vote. While he is entitled to his own
opinion, claiming to be speaking
for Kenyans during tense times
is definitely not his forte. He has
exhibited nuances of careless
talk and I would suggest whoever employed him to
transfer him to work with KWS,
wait, animals have rights too! Were we not better off with
our colonial masters? Is it not a
mockery of intellect and freedom
blood trying to let the more-
equal govern us? Better still,
were we better off without a spokesman? I do not know
about you, but this Thursday
thing is a punishment to
Kenyans and a waste of airtime.
I'd rather we stare at the fish
swimming from the Ugandan waters and into the Kenyan
plates than listening to him
whose IQ is very high. Idiotic
Quotient! "There is a thin line between
truth and fiction. This is that
line."
you’ ll get killed. Open your mouth wide and you’ ll get killed again. That has been the trend
since independence and it has
been carried through decades
and regimes with unabated
abandon. Count the number of
people whose assassinations were politically motivated and
you will run out of fingers
before you are quarter way
through. That is how bad it has
been. Not so any more, for
there is a new mouth in town! And it belongs to the
government! “Gaga! There is a backstreet university offering PhDs in child
speech and lies. That is where I
wasted time and money studying
instead of arranging stones
along the road to Kamiti where I
should be jailed for lying to people. Truth does not exist in
my vocabulary and if it does,
then I have never used it. I am
a liar by profession and my
foreign experience includes
calling my friend from the West to lie to Kenyans about Mijingo
and wasting time in the same
Western country shooting Cobra
Squad which has since been
considered by Brad Pitt and
Steven Spielberg for conversion into a true Hollywood cartoon
for blind and deaf children. I can
go on and on about my CV but I
will stop here.” A fool is wise until he opens his
mouth, how true? Thursday
afternoons are horror-movie
time in Kenya. Why? Just tune
into any news-channel and
watch a grown mouth lying to you in your face. First, he
ignores those journalists who
ask him the real questions and
then proceeds to give a whole
shebang of good news to his
employers. You expect people with PhDs to behave better but
this mouth is different. Ask him
questions and his answers will be
idiotic. Are we judging mouth too
much? “But Sir, I am in form one?” That would have been the best
answer this mouth would have
given to the person who asked
to employ him. Scene one:
Remember 2006 when Barack
Obama came to Kenya and rightfully disparaged the
government’ s efforts at fighting corruption? What
followed? This mouth called a
press conference and derided
Obama calling him a junior person
in pecking order whose words
were as inconsequential (as his). Kuffour just came over for tea.
Verbatim: They [Kufuor and
Kibaki] are age-mates and
friends and Kufuor is coming to
have a cup of tea with him. “ A gentle giant leaves his country,
the Gold Coast, to come to a
bloody and anarchic country for
tea?! Really?! How blessed are
we! The worst words ever
muttered by the government spokesman were in 2007, just
after the bloodletting had begun
in earnest. “It is normal for Kenyans to fight after every
election. So we expect this war
to continue for two or three
days and then things will be
back to normal.” He reasoned according to his wisdom, or the
lack of it. However, some of his
utterances have been nothing
short of shocking: “We have not yet reached a Somali like situation to allow
mediators to come to our
country,”he said. This was at the beggining of the post-
election violence in the country.
After a whole week of killings
and looting, the spokesman was
not willing to just admit that
there was indeed a crisis in Kenya. Hearing such things make
me wish that the Hague could
withdraw his right to speak and
include him in the envelope.
Maybe he thought this was
another episode in that failed eyesore called Cobra Squad.
What were we waiting for then?
To become a failed state then
rush to the donors for help and
aid? “We are in the process of putting together a team of
experts well versed in the
necessary required areas so
that they can join their
counterparts from other
countries participating in the inquiry“. Ask any students of English
what that statement means and
you will see them drenched in
sweat, scratching their heads
and flipping through Oxford and
Miriam-Webster trying to find any sense in it. Yet the
spokesman said it, in the eye of
the media. Whatever he meant,
we will know on judgement day. “It went beyond Prof. Alston’ s mandate and does not
encourage dialogue and appears
to have been made in bad
faith,” he said. Ask any Kenyan who witnessed the brutal police
in action after the violence and
you will find that the spokesman
lives in denial and hates the
light. Some of the policemen
even confessed to having received shoot-to-kill orders
from their bosses, yet some
death-outsider still claims that
there were no police-instigated
deaths last year? How sad? “The government’ s track record to reform is 90%”. This was overkill and ought not to
have been published in our
press. I lack words. This is an excerpt from an
article that appeared in a South
African paper after the killings
of two activists. “Kamau Kingara, director of the Oscar
Foundation, which runs free legal
aid clinics for the poor, and its
programmes coordinator, John
Paul Oulu, were shot in a busy
Nairobi street near the presidential residence on
Thursday evening. Only a few
hours earlier a government
spokesperson, Alfred Mutua, had
publicly accused their
organization of being a fundraising front for the feared
Mungiki criminal gang”. You wonder the kind of reputation
we have among our own African
countries? It is skewed. A few
minutes later and the "Right
Honourable" is out and loud
condemning the killings. I thought he was in the same government
that had vowed to deal
ruthlessly with the same outfit?
Actually who is the government?
And you, spokesman, who's your
daddy? Who do you speak for? Who tells you all that "gugu
gaga hu ha" that you shout all
the way from Nairobi to Mijingo?
I wonder. "They are just waking up at 10
o'clock, eating eggs and
sausages, giving interviews and
planning how to disrupt people's
lives," government spokesperson
Alfred Mutua told reporters. Also an excerpt from the same
paper, and shows what he said
when he was asked on his take
on the opposition leaders during
the hard times last year. With
comments like these, violence was bound to continue, and
indeed, the infamous mass
actions were called the next
day! Government spokesperson Alfred
Mutua accused Odinga of trying
to "use the back door to gain
power" by refusing to negotiate
with the president or use the
courts to contest the vote. While he is entitled to his own
opinion, claiming to be speaking
for Kenyans during tense times
is definitely not his forte. He has
exhibited nuances of careless
talk and I would suggest whoever employed him to
transfer him to work with KWS,
wait, animals have rights too! Were we not better off with
our colonial masters? Is it not a
mockery of intellect and freedom
blood trying to let the more-
equal govern us? Better still,
were we better off without a spokesman? I do not know
about you, but this Thursday
thing is a punishment to
Kenyans and a waste of airtime.
I'd rather we stare at the fish
swimming from the Ugandan waters and into the Kenyan
plates than listening to him
whose IQ is very high. Idiotic
Quotient! "There is a thin line between
truth and fiction. This is that
line."
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