Uncivil tongue

If a person behaves, in my opinion, foolishly, stupidly, idiotically or like an imbecile or a moron, and I say so to his face, if he feels sufficiently aggrieved by my characaterisation of his behaviour, he should sue me for damages. But if I characterise him and his community as fools, stupid, idiots, morons or imbeciles, and declare that it is those characteristics that are to blame for whatever ails his community or that they should be grounds to commit some extreme atrocity against them, then the full force of the Government of Kenya should be brought to bear against me.

Kenya, luckily, is not the land of the free nor the home of the brave, and the First Amendment does not apply here. It's text reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Johnson Muthama, George Aladwa, William Kabogo and Moses Kuria have recently helped concentrate the minds of Kenyans on what it means to insult and use abusive language against an individual or commit hate speech against an ethnic community.

Right or wrong, the political debate on ethnicity has revolved around three major ethnic groups; all others have received minor billing. It is these three, represented by the senior-most politicians in Kenya, whose fortunes are shaped by how they react to slurs directed at the these senior-most politicians. Moses Kuria set the tone, Johnson Muthama managed to top him, George Aladwa simply added fuel to a blazing bonfire and William Kabogo simply carried on from there. What was not in dispute is that tens of thousands of Kenyans were proud in the manner these four conducted themselves; "He defended us," they argued, "against that uncivilised man." Replace "uncivilised" with any other epithet and you will get a sense of what people have been programmed to think.

Muthama, et al, starkly expose the futility of trying to police what our leaders, including political leaders, say when the vast majority of the people see nothing illegitimate in our leaders' speeches. It is a most juvenile attitude towards speech and its impacts, but it is what we have. Many Kenyans seem to miss their high school days when they could speculate in salacious detail about the sexual proclivities of leaders among their peer groups. Messrs Kuria and Muthama are the apotheosis of this phenomenon, capturing the popular, but crass imaginations, of their core constituents, who will not sanction them for their intemperate speech. The National Police Service, the National Cohesion and Integration Commission, and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions will have the devil of a time sustaining convictions that will receive the broad support of these constituencies.

For one, political institutions in Kenya, including the official organs of the State, have done very little to restore the boundaries of law and custom that defined them before they were bulldozed during the latter years of the first Kenyatta regime. Especially in the political party, there are few rules or regulations that confine political leaders withing acceptable social or moral boundaries. This paucity of control contributes to the sense of invincibility that engenders the loose and polarising speech among the politicians, and the support for such speech from their constituents. Because of that, when it comes to this kind of speech, the National Police, the NCIC and the DPP will be seen as illegitimate interlopers out to cut short the ambitions of an entire ethnic community the national stage.