President Uhuru Kenyatta. AFP FILE PHOTO | ANDREW COWIE
This past week, we listened to President Uhuru Kenyatta as he
harangued us about taking personal responsibility for criminal
activities around us.
Specifically, he asked questions
about where we are or what we are doing when vile acts such as
defilement of minors and sexual assault of adult women happen. He asked
us all to take responsibility and stop such acts when they happen.
While
one must agree that in general we need to be more vigilant and
civic-minded, it is utterly irresponsible to suggest that everyone, and
therefore no one, is responsible for our collective security.
It
is distasteful to ask, as the President did, why anyone left a
three-year-old girl with her uncle who eventually defiled her. The fact
is that three-year-olds are supposed to be safe with their uncles. Women
are supposed to be safe on our streets and in our matatus!
People
elect governments for various reasons, but there is consensus on the
basic roles of a government. We elect governments to carry out tasks
that we cannot implement as individuals. Such tasks include maintaining
infrastructure, social services such as education and health, and
importantly, security of the citizens. Were every citizen to take their
security upon themselves, it would not take long before we descend into a
state of chaos from which even those with the best intentions would be
unable to extricate us.
MANY NEIGHBOURHOODS
If
it is government policy that each citizen is to take care of their own
security, we shall soon see declarations of sovereignty in many
neighbourhoods where people will band together to form vigilante groups
for their own security.
Given that whoever runs the
security apparatus runs people’s lives, it will follow that these
secured neighbourhoods will soon be operating like states within a
state. Within no time we shall have entered the era of warlords vying
for territorial control with the elected government.
Paradisiacal enclaves
Paradisiacal enclaves
Almost
all wealthy Kenyans take their children to private schools and
universities, and use private health services when unwell. They live in
gated communities where the roads are paved and water and sanitation are
provided by private companies.
They even have private
security companies guarding their homes, and have little contact with
the State within their paradisiacal enclaves.
If the
President endorses this model of living for everyone, then he must give
us a better justification to continue paying taxes.
He
must justify the need for Cabinet Secretaries in charge of security,
health, education and infrastructure, if all these are the
responsibility of the citizens. Perhaps he should introduce tax breaks
for those that take more “personal responsibility” for their own
well-being.
Eventually, he must give us a proper
justification for holding expensive regular elections whose product is a
government with no responsibilities.
A final word of
caution is in order. When we use intemperate language such as that
employed by the President in reference to sexual and physical assault,
we worsen the physical and psychological pain of the survivors, and
delay healing. We shift the blame to the victims, and leave them asking
if there was anything they could have done to provoke the attack, or to
prevent it.
My answer to all survivors of sexual or
even physical assault is that it is never your fault. Your attacker
bears full responsibility, no matter what!
Dr Lukoye Atwoli is Consultant Psychiatrist and Dean, Moi University School of Medicine; lukoye@gmail.com
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