No apology needed.

I suppose there are those who will sympathise with the Leader of the Minority Party in the Senate. I suppose there are those who feel that our national carrier, Kenya Airways, must apologise to the senator. I have no doubt that there is a group that is convinced that because of the senator's notoriety, he has no need to comply with mandatory requirement to carry one's national identity card at all times or the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority's mandatory requirement not to permit passengers to board airplanes without displaying at least one official document of identity.

Obviously, as if you didn't know by now, I do not fall into any of the aforementioned categories of victims of the Big Man Syndrome. I do not sympathise with the senator, nor do I think that his political notoriety entitles him to special treatment. From what we have been regaled with about the incident, Kenya Airways did not cover itself in glory either and they deserve the acres of bad press they are going to get. It's a shitty airline and if we had the option of flying Ethiopian Airlines on our domestic routes...or Virgin, Lufthansa or Emirates, you can guess how swiftly KQ would lose market share, can't you?

Back to the Big Man Syndrome. Nancy Barasa discovered just how swiftly the fall from grace can be once The Powers That Be turn their backs on you. I am informed that, like the Speaker of the National assembly and the Narc-K boss, the senator was once a magistrate, those pernickety sticklers for the letter of the law for which no discretion shall abide in its interpretation. So I am not inclined to cut him any slack because of his perceived importance in the face of a combative Kenya Airways; if the law that the senator imposed on others with magisterial determination demands his presentment of a national ID, why should he be given the go-bye simply because he is a modern-day nabob?

These people (and by "these people" I mean elected people) really should be taken down a peg or three. The Mau Mau could not have predicted that its land and freedom war would end up bequeathing Kenyans with aristocrats who were more beberu than the wabeberu. There are those kaburus who are yet to get the memo that Kenya is no longer a British colony and there's little we can do about their delusions. What they need is psycho-social support. But our modern-day colonists-in-African-skins need a sharp kick in the shins to snap them out of the delusion that they are the heirs of a British mandate to civilise Kenya.

If I am to go through security-vetting, so shall you, bwana senator. If I am to bend over backwards so that Kenya Airways does not illegally sell my seat on their flight to the next pale face, so shall you bwana senator. If I am going to suffer the unwashed armpits of that mzungu in the premier section, guess what, bwana senator? So shall you! You are not special. You don not deserve an apology. It is your job to show the way by obeying the law. All of it. Not the bits that you feel like. All of the law. And by the by, your Kenya Airways Platinum Membership Card, which I suspect taxpayers have financed, and your five credit cards (why the hell do you need five anyway? Mastercard and Visa are enough!), are not documents of identity. They never were. They never will be. You can ask the Cabinet Secretary for the Interior and Co-ordination of National Government to grant you one, but I do not think he is in a mood to give you a special dispensation. Hizo enzi zimepita!