President Uhuru Kenyatta Receives the Truth, Justice and Reconcilliation
Commission Final Report From the Commissions' Chairman Dr Bethwell
Kiplagat at State House Nairobi. PHOTO: PSCU
The people of Kenya are turning with
increasing sourness and overt intimidation on those who would freely
express their thoughts and are critical of public processes.
Public discourse is contained in a language of bitterness and seems determined to muzzle and suppress open society.
The
surrogates of emasculation, oppression, and intimidation seem
determined to cut short the grand march to our estimable sense of
nationhood. We seem to be a nation not marching together into the
future. Why is this?
Perhaps the answers lie in the
heavy burden of our atrocious past, which successive political
leaderships have not been keen to acknowledge and help the Kenyan nation
to conquer. Kenya’s future seems locked in the past despite gains made
in some sectors.
This past is well illustrated in the
botched process of the government-led Truth Justice and Reconciliation
Commission (TJRC), and in the report that it produced that we, as a
nation, are not ready to come to terms with.
The public
anger and growing intolerance towards divergent political positions
that the political class seems eager to stoke does not augur well for
the unity of our nation.
The optimism that once
characterised the Kenyan nation is no more. We seem incapable of
creating a shared future, a dignified citizenry, a nation that values
integrity and social justice. Those in leadership are determined to
scuttle such ideals with their stoking of intolerance and ethnic
bigotry.
Building a stable nation requires that those
in power walk firmly on the path of justice, forthrightness, peace, and
goodwill. It would be a national catastrophe if state institutions were
to be used to protect the powerful and privileged.
When
sections of the citizenry perceive themselves to be excluded from
national processes, there is a risk of the nation evolving into an
entity of self-glory that inevitably provides a marketplace for opinions
and doctrines that justify unfair and unpopular public decisions and
skewed social structures.
Successive political leaderships in Kenya have not been brave enough to handle the cruelty of past regimes.
This
is exemplified by the determination of the current political class to
silence the TJRC process that seeks to re-establish the dignity of those
who were brutalised by past regimes.
It is a story that seems condemned to be buried due to our insatiable greed for power and wealth.
We
lack the courage to face our monstrous past, and so have chosen to
either be co-opted into the oppressive system or become indifferent to
the plight of those who have been dehumanised.
Even as
we celebrate our 50th anniversary, many of us conveniently ignore the
stories of those who grieve for loved ones who were not allowed to see
the future we rejoice in today.
Instead, we want to resist the probing voices of our collective amnesia.
We
conveniently avoid the clamour for justice for the cold journeys that
past regimes took the nation through. Instead, we are eager to welcome
state-sanctioned terror and suppression of platforms for free expression
and integration.
Mr Chiliswa is a programmes coordinator at the Jesuit Hakimani Centre.
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