AJUOK: Why fear, brutality not effective in silencing citizens

 

In his short story, Civil Peace, Chinua Achebe narrates the tale of his main character, Jonathan Iwegbu, whose life motto is “nothing puzzles God”, and who tries to eke out a basic living under difficult circumstances after the Biafran War. Iwegbu’s beloved bicycle has survived the civil war too, and he returns to his village to find that his house miraculously still stands.

From there, he begins to make do with whatever he can, one day at a time, to keep his family afloat. The theme of the story is basically about a positive outlook to life, despite very dire situations, especially after a devastating conflict.

When the anti-government protests called by Azimio fizzled out on Friday last week, I saw it merely as “civil peace”, a post-conflict uneasy lull with no real solutions on either side, and therefore great chances that the peace would be interrupted at any moment.

At the time of writing this, protests against high taxation and rising cost of living, slated by the Azimio leadership for Wednesday this week, had been revised to “solidarity parades and vigils for victims of police brutality”.

This was after three-day protests had died out by Friday, the last of the three days. Kenya Kwanza politicians were in celebratory mood after the collapse of the demos, believing that the week-long threats to “deal firmly with protests leaders” had borne fruits.

To be clear, the failure of Azimio leaders, with the exception of Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna, to appear in public for the three days of last week’s planned protests, did more to blunt the protests than any threats issued by government.

As with nearly all protests, the sharper edge is only achieved when protest leaders are visible. Last we heard was that Azimio leader Raila Odinga had been taken ill with a bad flu, while Wiper chief Kalonzo Musyoka was under house arrest. There was no news on the whereabouts of other Azimio principals and elected leaders, even though they were tweeting furiously from wherever holes they were in.

Regardless, the bigger news turned out not to be the glaring absence of Azimio leaders, but the conduct of police in suppressing the protests. As if reeling from anger of being caught on the back foot in the previous week’s demos, the police this time appeared to have come to make a statement.

Pictures of alleged police officers in civilian gear brutalising unarmed protestors, reports of leaders being picked and driven away to faraway police stations and overnight orgy of violence in Kisumu targeting homes and innocent civilians summarised the “new philosophy” of the regime’s public order control.

I have heard people resort to the common refrain “return of the dark Kanu era” in reference to the conduct of police, especially the militia-like behaviour last week. What not many people have considered is the possibility of this regime being worse than that Kanu era.

Police brutality was a problem under President Moi, but there is no record showing that he unleashed police on civilians within the first year of his rule. Besides, the mere thought of police plucking civilians from inside their homes and beating them senseless wasn’t necessarily a Moi regime method.

More importantly, the Moi between 1992 and 2002, after multiparty politics had been restored, was rather tolerant to public criticism and demonstrations, obviously aware that with pluralism came multiple opinions that the government could neither control nor influence. This is the reality yet to hit the ruling regime today. That we live in 2023, not the 1950s colonial state or the 1980s Kanu police state.

All through the anti-government demos, the grievances, of the protestors have been quite clear. A casual observer can list the rising cost of living, high taxation and government insensitivity to public despondency as among the top issues.

Watching the demos and listening to interviews with protestors out on the streets, none of them ever mentions Azimio’s favourite “open servers” rallying call. And certainly, nobody has ever come close to asking for a handshake, as the government’s almost-hypnotised political rhetoric likes to paint it.

Yet, with such clear grievances on the table, the regime has consistently opted to respond by warning the Azimio supporters and their leaders that it would “deal with them once and for all”. Unleashing the police on unarmed citizens, in the belief that you can terrorise the population into silence, achieves only the temporary effect of pushing boiling anger under the surface, ripe for a trigger in the future. History is already replete with virulent dictators who unleashed brute force on their subjects, but when the fall came, they fell with an almighty thud.

One of the things that irk me the most is the readiness of the police in this country to deploy heavy hardware, robocop-level attire and large numbers of troops in going after unarmed civilians, at a time when more pressing security needs abound elsewhere. It was in the same week that Mandera Governor Mohamed Khalif was widely quoted in mainstream media stating that the terrorist group, al Shabab, now controls 60 per cent of the county.

He may have been forced to revise this statement later, but this admission gives one a sneak peek into the security situation in not just Mandera, but in northeastern Kenya as a whole. Of course, there are other pressing forms of crime prevalent in other parts of the country. This makes the fake “bravery” displayed by police in bludgeoning civilians a sickening spectacle, when this bravado and efficiency can be directed at bigger national security threats.

It should worry Ruto that his acolytes, in responding to Azimio protests, like to remind the opposition that “Ruto is not Uhuru”, a not-so-subtle message that the President is more ruthless and uncompromising than Uhuru.

There are others, like chief gadfly, Nandi Senator Samson Cherargei, who in unguarded moments, even go further to make subtle warnings based on perceived martial threats of their community. But having taken the oath of office to be the symbol of national unity and Commander-in-Chief, Ruto doesn’t have the luxury of “not being Uhuru”.

There is no other way to lead a sharply divided nation than to embrace the tenets of dialogue, national cohesion and fair arbitration of disputes. It may hit him much later in his reign, but it certainly will become clearer to Ruto that the police can push millions of rioting youths back into the slums and poor villages, but that in itself hardly constitutes a sustainable solution to whatever disputes they may have.

Soon, he will also discover that worse foes with much bitter divisions have had to sit around a table to iron out their differences and save their nations. Creating a state of fear through police brutality may succeed in the short-term, but the sense of injustice pushed below the surface never stays there too long.

The picture would be clearer, faster, if Ruto didn’t have to listen to hawks around him like Kimani Ichung’wa, Rigathi Gachagua and Moses Kuria, whose own power calculations are probably threatened by any cross-isle deals the president may make with political foes.

However, the country, as Uhuru discovered in early 2018, is too big an enterprise to be beholden to the feelings of potential jilted political lovers fearing losing out following rapprochement between various political formations.     BY THE STAR