Commentary (by Ken Kamoche) - Critics of 'foreign interference' are selfish

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Story by KEN KAMOCHE
Publication Date: 3/2/2008

My attention was drawn to a recent media report that former British Premier Tony Blair has been appointed a special adviser to the Paul Kagame’s government in Rwanda. Apparently, Mr Blair’s remit is to help the country’s economy recover from the aftermath of the 1990s genocide by attracting foreign investment.

This comes at a time when Kenya is hosting the Kofi Annan-led team of eminent personalities working to resolve the political stalemate in the country.

So, what happened to all that nonsense about foreigners interfering with so-called national sovereignty? Have African leaders suddenly realised there is nothing wrong with taking a bit of advice from beyond their borders?

Clearly not, if the intransigence of the Sudanese regime is anything to go by, or in fact in the case of Kenya itself, where bloated egos have become obstacle to peace.

One thing is clear. The population is waking up to the reality that criticisms of so-called foreign intervention are simply lame excuses by hard-line politicians hell-bent on saving their skins and protecting their political careers while painting the foreign diplomat or politician as a despicable bogeyman.

The constant warnings and invectives that emanate from ministers’ mouths telling off these bogeymen and reminding them that Kenya is no longer a colony are nauseating and ludicrous in the extreme.

Kenya might be an independent country, independent, that is from an ex-colonial power.

Unfortunately, we are by no means free of the plutocrat-kleptocrat regimes that replaced the colonial one. We should be even more wary of this home-grown type of maladministration which is able to sell itself as one of us, as our genuine spokesperson because it is racially - if not ethnically - at one with us.

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu put forward an interesting concept which he termed ‘symbolic violence’. Nothing to do with violent mobs on the streets.

Power imbalances

If anything, the violence is so subtle you barely notice it because you play a part in approving it. Simply put, symbolic violence is the exercise of power upon a people with their complicit acceptance.

Sounds like democracy, doesn’t it? You cast your vote, put us into power, so, you agreed to our ruling you, right?

Trouble is, the mechanisms of social control are not always explicit. And more ominously, symbolic violence operates by denying while simultaneously reinforcing troublesome realities like power imbalances, and in our case, one would argue, ethnic tensions, and the political structures that keep people divided and economic classes, separated.

Because the ordinary man and woman is unable to participate in the corrupt economy that they see enriching the high and mighty, they nevertheless accept that corruption is the only way to overnight riches.

People see their leaders getting away with grand theft, arrogant talk, wanton ridicule of any outsiders who might be pointing out the emperor’s nakedness. Everyone assumes this is the national moral code.

They lend their complicity to the venal administration, and ultimately succumb to the domination that they themselves help legitimize. Bourdieu called this reconnaissance sans connaissance, meaning: recognition without knowledge.

Once we’ve succumbed to misrecognition we cannot turn round and say, ‘we won’t accept these outsiders’ criticism and help’. Because to do so would be to admit that we’ve been hoodwinked.

To accept Condoleezza Rice’s, Mr Annan’s or Desmond Tutu’s claims that a culture of impunity and corruption is destroying our nation is to accept we’ve all along been misguided in our choice of politics, and that our leaders are not the demi-gods we’ve made them out to be.

Mental colonialism by our own leaders is a hundred times more insidious than control by foreigners because it is like a cancer buried deep within the living tissue of the nation-state.

The cancer cannot be removed by a quick operation under local anaesthesia, or by chucking the governor and his henchmen back to their country.

It requires a new form of recognition: recognition with knowledge. We must, as a people begin to question whom our leaders are speaking for when they say ‘stay off our national affairs’.

Sovereignty is not synonymous with the political space in which rival parties scramble over ministerial appointments and other goodies. Though it is about independent rule and power as exercised by a government free of external interference, under no circumstances can it be used to justify the service of narrow factional interests that override the national good.

When people lose faith in their leaders’ ability to ensure peace and stability because the leaders are too busy fighting over power, when talks to resolve the current crisis threaten to degenerate into a circus, it should become clear to the leaders that this is no longer about them. It’s not about foreigners. It’s about Kenya’s future.

Professor Ken Kamoche is an academic and writer