Le'ON

“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” Steve Biko.

I have always maintained the eye of my pen on the youths, because I believe change must begin here. I will not even on a single day write about the old geezers of the African politics in Kenya. I will not bash Raila, Uhuru, Ruto and their ilk. Never. Because these folks have lived their lives, they have succeeded, and equally blundered big time.

But I may spend a lot of my time criticizing, cajoling and calling the young men and women to action. Because we have a continent that is thirsting for change, a continent that is so ripe for new seeds leadership.

Yet I am perturbed at how youths are failing to create a niche for themselves in this entire arena of political leadership. It’s either you align yourself with the big guys or you are doomed. Young people are zombied to singing praise and worship to the established political thingamabobs of the land. They think they can’t do a thing about the status quo. We are wrong…

The unborn baby that fears criticism will never be born – Burundi Proverb.

Civic Leadership is Not…

There are a host of my friends especially those who were leaders in their campuses and colleges, who still ride high on the ancient glory. They think if you became the president of the University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University , Moi University, JKUAT among others then you are probably an inch length far from the top leadership of a country. You see, these folks aren’t bad people but they must get their thinking straight.

So you find them hanging around politicians hoping that they can be given a magic wand that would get them to power. This is utterly wrong; this is not what civic leadership is about. It’s never about power.

Civic leadership is not spending time on Twitter or Facebook cyberbullying and bashing opponents with toxic and harsh words. It’s not about acidic altercations that leads to disdain and contempt. Civic leadership is not about writing long anonymous posts proving who is corrupt and who is not, that is the work of the investigative institutions. Civic leadership is not about showing disrespect to people you differ with in opinions or people who come from a tribe you don’t belong. Civic leadership is not about use of obscenities and negative energy against a fellow citizen.

We have a problem of copying people; we have copied how the old folks do their politics until we think that is the script. No! Please, we need some mature politics. We don’t want a leadership that is full of hatred and like polarizing the country. So, my fellow young Africans especially of Kenyan descent, let’s shape up!

Civic leadership is about…

Also known as civic engagement, civil leadership means working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities. It’s about combining knowledge, values, skills and motivating factors that would create a difference in the neighborhood. Civic leadership means getting involved into promoting quality of life in your community either through political or/and apolitical process. A civic leader therefore must not necessarily be a politician. A civic leader respects and values the environment and the people.

Sometimes I feel that most of us Africans are taking a long track to maturity, we are taking too long. Maturity is in appreciating that someone can be different from you, they can hold different opinions, and they are still human beings that deserve a decent treatment and respect. It’s simple. Don’t force people to your line of thinking by profiling, vilifying and overly demonizing an opponent. Things don’t work like that in a civilized environment. Which explains why most of our Kenyan politicians are punching below their weight. The country is kept hostage every electioneering period because of bad leaders(politicians).

Four Key Skills Exhibited by Successful Civic Leaders.

1. Listening– a civic leader must develop a sense of empathy for one another. He/she must endeavor to listen to the problems that are bedeviling a community.
2. Research– life is dynamic, things change and a civic leader must not be too obstinate to change. He/she must not preserve the status quo. He/she must seek to find the new directions that life has taken. He/she must engage in fact finding, and must be able to deal with the results of the research in improving lives.
3. Create– create a vision, an all-inclusive vision. The vision must be bold and inspirational, bolstered with logical details on how it can be achieved. Like for me, my vision is for an African society where everyone feels valued and respected irrespective of their tribal origins, a society where women are treated with equal dignity as men and children are getting access to good living.
4. Action– We need action, and between creation of vision and taking action, there is a need for proper, and logical planning. Then brave and action oriented civic leaders can ensure the set goals and objectives are achieved.

There is a crop of civic leaders that I desire to see in Africa, a league of true leaders not hooligans who think they are entitled to leadership because they have amassed wealth and can mobilize idle youths en masse into their toxic political camps. I dream for a nation where leaders will find it non comforting to sleep in the high end hotels while the citizens are being swept by floods. I hope for a better Africa, an enlightened masses, and a leadership conscience enough to the problems that we face. And we can get all these if the youths can make the change.

“Freedom! We want Freedom Now! We want our government…Us governing Us!”

These were the decry of our forefathers against the colonial regime. Their enchanted zeal was for an establishment of own government. An African government, a Kenyan government. The echoing voices of the Pan Africanist could be heard. Seems like the time was ripe for the blacks to rule themselves and there was no need for any delays.

The Freedom fighters could not relent; they went for broke with the established Whiteman’s government in order to bag the freedom we most desired.  Mau Mau fighters beefed up the efforts, and with unbridled attempt to annihilate the taciturn white men they settle scores with their blood. Yes, we lost many lives, mostly Agikiyu people, and we got our independence at the end of it all.

Today we celebrate their efforts to bring us freedom, Madaraka day is fast approaching. They sacrificed their lives for the good, and I am one of the many Kenyans who are proud. We can toss our glasses in the air, we can smile on the historic victory, but before we put our glasses down, we must reflect that Kenya today is worse than it ought to be.

Comparing a shoe shiner Then and a shoe shiner Now

In her book, ‘It’s Our Turn to Eat”, Michela Wrong alludes, and I paraphrase, that during the colonial period it was possible to meet a shoe shiner in his nice suit within the streets of Nairobi. She explains that life then was relatively convenient for the Kenyan citizens, and money had value. I know it’s defeating to comprehend, but yes, a shoe shiner could afford a comfortable stay within the city.

Today, graduate lawyers can’t secure employment. Graduate engineers have no jobs, and biochemist graduates are landing into matatu industry to work as touts, these are just but a few professions. Why has life become so draining in this republic we call ours? What happened to the freedom we much fought for hoping would change our lives?

Not Yet Uhuru

Freedom is the lack of a specific constraint, or of constraints in general; a state of being free, unconstrained (British Dictionary). It’s suffices, therefore, to say that when people are restrained then they aren’t free at all. Freedom comes with empowerment; political, civil, economic and social empowerment.

A people aren’t free indeed if their economic muscles are being tweaked by harsh conditions, huge tax burdens, high school fees and lack of employment. People can’t be free when the government is doing virtually nothing to create a conducive environment for job creations. I mean, we have always been advised to be job creators rather than job seekers but the prevailing conditions can’t allow dreams to thrive. This is as hard as asking a farmer to farm in a desert where irrigation has not been supplied.

A people can’t be free when the government does things in own volition without massive involvement of the masses, then connives with its high-end power machinery to force the decision down the throats of the people. I mean, huduma number registration could be a good thing but downright force on the citizens to register or they risk losing certain rights is an old fashioned way of doing things. We can do better than these rough-cabbage threats.

The media is still muzzled, hoodwinked and even intimidated by the highs and the mighties of the country. We can’t have any progress. The judiciary is stinking to the high heavens, rotten, no justice for those who can’t throw in serious money. Politicians still perpetrate tribal politics and we are naïve to swim in the dirty rivers of petty politics of hating other tribes. We aren’t free indeed, we are still in shackles.

Youth Unemployment

According to KNBS statistics 2018, 7 million Kenyan youths are employed. This is a perturbing reality. A country that is endowed with a fund of natural resources can’t guarantee its college graduates jobs? I country that has a honey-comb of billionaires, and a wide rank of millionaire capitalists. A country whose government officials never lack, in fact, they have too much that they spend millions over the week on expensive liquors and high-end party celebrations.

Isn’t it appalling that in this day and age, a country like Kenya can still have its citizens starve to death while the country is politically stable?

Encouraging Manufacturing Industries

The bigwigs have ventured into real estate businesses, the city(Nairobi) is full of splendid houses but housing people who just work to pay rent religiously and can’t improve themselves. I think real estate is a good investment but it serves only the rich investors. This type of business doesn’t accord more job opportunities. Real estate firms don’t have many employees and rich prigs like such kinds of businesses where they earn more and spend less. Evil Capitalism.

Lands are grabbed by our billionaires but not put into any serious business venture apart from real estate. The wazungus grabbed lands but started agricultural firms and other industries that generate jobs for Kenyans. I think the mzungu grabber was better than our current tribal grabbers. It’s either Kenyans are ignorant or there is no willpower.

Encouraging Agriculture and Manufacturing industries should be the way to go. Though the president has “Manufacturing” as one of the big 4 agenda little has been done to this end. With manufacturing, more jobs can be created and this nation will be picking its wings, getting ready for an economic flight to true liberation. The US jetted into eternal affluence due to its manufacturing Industries initiated by ancient capitalists like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, JP Morgan, and the ilk.

Parting Shot

Methinks, suppose the colonialist tarried a little longer we would be living in a better nation, a nation with better opportunities for its people. This doesn’t mean I celebrate the evil damages that were abetted on Africans during the colonial periods, I don’t. But it is just a mocking statement to a nation called Kenya that has refused to rise and take its rightful position among the great nations of this world.

“Your presence matters more than your presents,” is almost a colloquial cliché but loaded with incontestable truth. We are brooding or rather, living in an aching society. There is a yawning gulf that exists between the society that we ought versus the society that we indeed are. The appalling reality is that today, we have so many adults locked and trapped in baby manners, adults who are hopeless and clueless on adulthood, and of these, men make the majority. Why?

A writer, H. Norman Wright aptly says, “One of the greatest underestimated tragedies of our day is the psychological and physical distance of fathers from their children. This distance is contrary to the explicit teachings of Scripture which defines the roles and involvement of the father with a child.” This is the truth not in part, and it’s weighed in with a disturbing observation by David Blankenhorn who says in his book Fatherless America, “Tonight…about 40 percent of American children will go to sleep in homes in which their fathers do not live.”

When Men Kill Their Women, Somethings is Incidentally Wrong in a society

For the past couple of months, our news headlines have been graced with increased women death tolls in a manner so frequent that we must ventilate on the matter. It’s scientifically held that men are more prone to deaths than women, but the state of our country today is almost outwitted this scientific fact. Today, women in marriages or in love affairs are more likely to be killed or commit suicide. And here is where the rubber hits the road.

Why has it become so, that men are threats to the lives of their women? I can’t ignore the fact that in some marriages, some women are just overly intolerable and difficult to deal with. But in instances without number, men have either hacked their wives to death, frequently subjected their women to domestic abuse, killed their children or even worse still, neglected the families altogether.

Most Men of Today Suffer from Father-Son Missing Link

We all need a role model in life, someone who has lived ahead of us, has had the experience of life and is willing to lend us a chart for life. Truth be told, you can have all the educations and the knowledge of this world but there is an impalpable wisdom, the touchstone of meaningful living; this wisdom is not gotten from books.

I have had my fair share of struggles in this jungle called life. To every young man, there is that stage of youthful life where you get under the compelling desire to have a lover; and if you are not acquainted with many unflinching facts about women, you end up faltering and making insurmountable mistakes. So, I have had some remorseful and regrets in my life because I did make mistakes which I would have avoided if I had the capacity and nudge to do it earlier enough.

The problem is that I had my dad for my first 18 years then I lost him totally, he died. But honestly speaking, I lost my dad even when he was still alive. The man taught us how to hustle and make money, he used to tag me a long sometimes whenever he went for his business hustles. However, during those hours, I never heard him talk about his life, his struggles. He didn’t tell me what was expected of me in life.

He didn’t tell me how he understood his woman (my mother), that is, if he did understand mum. He ignored these talks, and so we didn’t have him, he wasn’t there to sharpen his sons for life. My dad was that busy buddy who could take three days away from home and when he come back, the only place we could sit down together was at dinner table which didn’t last for more than 30 minutes.

I must admit, I walked into my adulthood without a sketch of what was expected of me as a man. A part from the knowledge of the Bible and class work, there was nothing else to prepare me for manhood. I didn’t have someone who was willing to give me a blueprint of what is needed of me as an African man, a Luo man growing up to be a good man.

There was no anecdote dad gave us on how to treat our women, he didn’t tell us his experiences, his failures and his successes. He was silent, he was not there. The only advice I ever got about how a man should treat his woman was from an uncle who recklessly told me, “woman are very bad animals. They are difficult to understand, if you have one who messes you up, add another one to tone her down.” He was brutally honest, advising me, but he was downright wrong because his family is unstable to date. I guess he also suffered from Father-son missing link.

Every Son Needs Good Fatherhood as He matures to Manhood

I watched a recitation by a young boy, a city-bred boy. In the poem he complains that dads and mums don’t create time for them because they are so busy. Parents think their kids love presents so much, they work hard to buy them one while they truth is those kids need the presence of the parents.

Today we have men who are too impatient, clueless about manhood and utterly negative because their fathers missed to help them shape up. Boys draw lessons from movies they watch where women are butchered and hacked to death. They see wrong musicians misbehaving with women and they think that is the way it is. Some of them are being auctioned for mediocrity by their reckless uncles, relatives or friends. Truth be told every erring man today is a boy who suffers from Father-Son missing link.

In a nutshell, those who have children, spare time for them. Talk to them, engage them. Prepare the boys for manhood.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton