Commentary (by Edward Buri) - Our leaders need to reinvent themselves

Ref: http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=25&newsid=116514


Story by EDWARD BURI
Publication Date: 2/10/2008

About eight weeks ago, the ingredients were all in place to call Kenya a country to watch.

But today, our heads are bowed in shame. Internally, there are questions galore, the first being “Is this us?” And the answer is as straightforward and is also three words: “It is us.” Some amongst us are proud of the state of the nation because evil is who they are, and evil is what they wanted.

But there are many Kenyans who are allergic to evil, who would rather have and promote the good, the sober, and the upright.

The future of our country lies in the strength and faith of these Kenyans — these people who will not put up with the blinding smoke of another torched house.

Who will resist the poisoned arrow that threatens to send another household into unnecessary mourning. Who will stand in harm’s way as they insist that their fellow Kenyans need not desert their stations of genuine livelihood to head for the confusing destination called “ancestral homes.”

THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY LIES IN the minds of the Kenyans who will not put up with the manipulation of self-proclaimed patriotic national leaders who in reality are devoted factional leaders.

Acts accomplished by a courageous evil will not be undone by a cowardly good. To wrestle the destiny of this country from evil hands, the cardinal virtue of courage is inevitable. Some perspectives would be helpful as we reconstruct the hope that will guide our acts of reconstruction.

It will go down in the chronicles of Kenya’s history that the first accomplishment of the present legislators was chaos, a kind of chaos that set on fire the granaries of our past hard-earned gains as if it were a worthless piece of tattered cloth. With such a chaotic accomplishment, these legislators are to many Kenyans symbols of antagonism.

THE KIND OF DAMAGE THAT KENYA HAS suffered does not need dramatised peace, it needs peace itself. It is therefore immoral to conduct circuits of peace rallies that are mere political soothings. That old model will not work. Kenyans’ hearts have dropped too low for heads to wave their hands mindlessly. In our circumstance, the true symbol of hope is not the one who talks it. It is the one who has the courage to actually embody it. Our leaders will need to reinvent themselves if they have any ambition to be symbols of hope.

It is fitting to state that being a symbol of hope is not a preserve of the politicians. Constructively passionate persons from the business sector, the religious sector — all sectors and even from the general citizenry should rise up at community and national levels to enlarge the sorry number of believable peace symbols.

One of the characteristics of Kenyans is that we have a short memory — but a short memory must not translate to a shallow ingestion of such experiences as we have gone through following the election. Our memory should be short enough to thrust us on our way ahead within the shortest time, but long enough to form an integral part of the wisdom that informs our acts in the future.

In the movie Hotel Rwanda, the hotel manager who waited for the Belgian army to come save the Rwandans is devastated on realising that long-awaited soldiers came only to aid the evacuation of the Westerners. In his bitterness he criticises himself and says, “I have no memory, I have no history.”

If he had remembered that these were the same people who had exploited them for so long, he would have been more creative in finding salvation for his people. If we are to build a hope to guide our reconstruction, then it must be informed a lot by our memory, our history and its lessons. This way, our hope gains a helpful pro-active dimension.

There is such a thing as destructive spirituality. Most of the players in the current chaos have been linked to certain spiritual connections. They are known to appeal to some celestial power to whom they pay homage. The hope that these players have is rooted in the capacity of their spiritual source to perform. While spirituality is part of humanness, a spirituality that corrodes the love for the neighbour and instead instils a murderous hatred is at the very best suspect.

THE HOPE THAT WILL ESCORT US EFFECTIVELY on the path of integration is one that has love and peace at its core. In the pre- and post-election situation, we have witnessed with saSNess religious institutions compromised from their identity as issuers of virtue to being supporters of parties and persons. Where these watersheds of spirituality are so polluted, the moral conscience of society dies.

In their death, they were tribalised and came alive as sponsors of hatred. The protectors of the people became their killers. The embracers of all became discriminators. If these organisations intend to play a believable role in reconstruction of our society, they will not redeem themselves by a mere reorganisation. It will take a courageous conversion.

Only such a rebirth will restore their stature as agents of authentic hope. A Jewish scholar and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote The Dignity of Difference. Coded in this title is a philosophy that each Kenyan should appropriate and each politician propagate — that difference should not be a ground for demeaning the other. Rather it should be a basis of honouring them. Our minds have been saturated with such a negative view of the tribe that we require a baptism to make good steps into a real reconstruction.

The one place where cultures are celebrated is in the National Music Festivals where people from different communities unhesitatingly wear and showcase the cultures of others. There you see a team from Eastern province present a piece from a culture in Western province. They sing their songs, dance their music, even burst into wild celebration on victory. If we together courageously and creatively laboured to transfer this spirit into our daily lives, then the neighbour’s culture becomes not a source of pain, but a channel of joy.

Edward Buri is a Nairobi theologian and a religious minister.