First,
every person who departs the world deserves a dignified send-off, for
the simple reason that he or she is a human being. Second, the departed
person is a beloved mother, father, brother or sister to someone, and to
speak ill of them, especially publicly, would be insensitive to the
feelings of their loved ones.
However, if the departed
were public figures, it would be amiss for us in our capacities as
historians or commentators on the human condition, not to evaluate how
their actions or inaction influenced the course of history for better or
worse.
Over the past couple of weeks in Kenya, we
have seen, almost in quick succession, the deaths of key figures in the
Kanu regime, from natural causes. What has struck me has been the
tendency by the Jubilee government to use the adage explained above as a
licence to engage in alarming historical revisionism.
From
the perspective of the regime, the departed gentlemen were Mandela-like
colossi, championing the cause of justice for Kenyans, and making
unprecedented contributions to their socio-economic wellbeing.
Really?
Then why, we must ask, were the Kanu years as dehumanising as the
colonial era? How could the gentlemen remain active members of a regime
that tortured, detained, murdered or exiled those who exercised
independent thought?
Competing versions of history
The
fact that we are now implementing a new Constitution that seeks to
extricate Kenya from the socio-economic and political nightmare wrought
by the Kanu dictatorship contradicts the well-orchestrated attempt by
Jubilee to revise history.
But why do a people have
competing versions of history? Or, more fundamentally, why do we compete
so viciously in order to tell our history?
Some years
ago, Charles Njonjo, a key architect of the Kanu regime, appearing on a
TV show, mentioned his heroes as being former Kanu spy chiefs, army
generals and commissioners of police. Would, say, Timothy Njoya, an
outspoken opponent of the Kanu regime, who came close to death more than
once on account of his stance, agree with Njonjo’s notion of history ?
Telling
history from a particular perspective does two things. First, it
legitimises the actions taken by the one telling the story or taken by
his ideological and class colleagues. Second, it removes from those on
the receiving end of that history the psychological and conceptual
ability to imagine another historical trajectory.
So,
like Candide, the eponymous character in Voltaire’s book, who despite
the decay of 18th century France wrought by the religious and political
class, could only see these conditions as being “the best of all
possible worlds.” So Njonjo wants to justify the actions he took as a
key Kanu figure, but more crucially, to convince us that the Kanu era
was the best “of all possible worlds.”
Acceptance that
the Kanu period was the best of all possible worlds has implications for
restorative or punitive justice. Acceptance means that there will be no
calls for individuals who committed human-rights abuses to be held to
account.
It will mean that there will be no calls for
repatriation of the stolen millions stashed abroad. For instance,
Jubilee is opposed to the implementation of the Truth Justice and
Reconciliation Commission report. The report contradicts the notion that
the Kanu period was the best of all possible worlds. It documents gross
human-rights violations and massive theft of public monies and lands
during that period.
Acceptance of the TJRC report has
implications for justice. So naturally, Njonjo and Jubilee will insist
that the Kanu period was the best of all possible worlds. Let sleeping
dogs lie, we are told.
But it is by looking back that
we can find out, as Achebe would say, when the rain started beating us.
Questioning official truths will lead us to ask why we got so
short-changed. Refusing to accept that the present or past conditions
are the best of all possible worlds will allow us to dream of other more
just and prosperous words.
Every human society that
has made socio-economic progress has done so when it refused to accept
that its condition was the best of all possible worlds. Therefore, it
demanded justice over past wrongs.
And by doing so, it demonstrated that it would not be wronged again. So looking back is important. History is important.
And those seeking to change their oppressed condition must appropriate the telling of their history.
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