This year, like every other election year, a tiny virtually useless piece of skin, will be the talk of the country. This skin will make grownups to take sides and call each other unprintable insults. This skin will make us to show our true colours.
According to the nurturingroot.com, “the average adult foreskin consists of 1½ inches of outer skin, 1½ inches of inner mucosal lining – totaling a length of 3 inches – and is 5 inches in circumference when erect”.
Between 3 to 5 inches of skin that does not add any leadership values; this is what will cost some reputable men the opportunity to lead their communities and country to grow in leaps and bounds.
This year, some men who are seeking elective office will be judged, not by the content of their character or the size of their dreams, but because, ostensibly, they are uncircumcised. These men will undergo psychological abuse in full public view. These men will be abused by men, women and children who have been made to believe that any person who is perceived to have a foreskin is not fit to hold public office. Their spouses and children will have to bear this burden.
This year, prejudice will be blatantly paraded before our nation. The irony of this is, when racial prejudice happens in, say, the USA, the same Kenyans will be the first to stand with their brothers and sisters in the USA. If we are not hypocrites, then I’m POTUS.
Me? I’m a 70s kid. I grew up in a Nairobi which was a melting pot of different cultures. I cannot recall a time when, while playing with my friends who had been circumcised, lines were drawn to divide us along circumcision lines. For those of us who were not circumcised, we were comfortable in our foreskins.
Ridicule and prejudice
Man, ignorance is bliss. You grow up and, bam, you may think that, from the way you are being judged, your foreskin is plastered on your forehead. Come on, folks, we are better than this.
What’s a foreskin got to do with holding public office in this time and age? Folks, it’s a divide-and-rule tactic. It’s the same ploy our colonisers employed, to great success. We are being played. When this game is over, the folks who played us against each other will be the winners. They will seat together and divide the loot, while we bemoan our stupidity. Again.
In all sports known to man, competitors cannot hit each other below the belt. It is not only frowned upon, but it is seen as an act of cowardice. In boxing, fighters have been known to lose bouts and respect because they hit their opponent below the belt. Some have faced bans because they broke this golden rule.
Unfortunately, the same rule does not apply in politics. In political spheres, anything goes. The lower some men hit each other, the more points they accrue. Politics is often referred to as the dirty game. But we can make it clean. As men, because we are at the forefront of politics, we can promise that, this time round, we will do and say unto other men what we would like them to do and say unto us.
Men, we can do this. We can defend other men from ridicule and prejudice, even if we hold opposing views. We can do what Senator John McCain did when he valiantly defended his political opponent – Barack Obama – when the latter was being derided by McCain’s supporter.
Men, we can do better politics. We can be civil, even when in opposite sides of the political divide. We can be the change this nation so sorely needs. It’s what is in a man’s brain that counts; not what’s in his boxers. BY DAILY NATION