KAIKAI'S KICKER: Of big dreams and small things

On my Kicker tonight, it goes without saying that Kenyan politics can be one heck of a traveling circus.

As individual citizens, all you have to do sometimes is just wait at a vantage point to get the best view when the circus rolls down your street. I bet we all had a great view this week because it was quite a thrill down the national street.

A vastly restructured circus staged a highly energized and frenzied show. The show was high on rhetoric and packed with anger and unexplained rage.

But let’s pack all that in the shelf of curiosity for the attention of anger therapists, and take a moment to appreciate the one enduring collective attribute about Kenyans; we are masters when it comes to the impossible art of balancing contrasts.

You see, in the middle of a muddy pigsty wrestling contest, only Kenyans can proclaim spotless cleanliness even in the face of flying mudballs.

Patriotism, for example, found its way into the roadshow rhetoric of the week as some politicians found time to lecture our youth about patriotism. From the outset, let us say it; that was brazen. Now that is what audacity looks like.

And we say this for two reasons: first, the biblical rule against seeing a speck in another’s eye, while somehow failing to see the log in your own eye. That biblical rule goes well with the other old adage of preaching water while drinking wine.

When it comes to patriotism, only a handful, if at all, of the current generation of politicians can authoritatively invoke, comment, advise, or in any other manner converse on the matter of patriotism.

The main reason is most politicians, especially the latter generation, get the definition of patriotism all wrong. The Cambridge Dictionary defines patriotism as the feeling of loving your country more than any other and the feeling of loving your country. The buzzword here is country. Not person. Not government. Not politician.

Patriotism would, for example, include a strong sense of anger and embarrassment about your country being infiltrated by foreign security agents sneaking in, taking control of a prestigious address, arresting a prominent leader of a neighboring country, and spiriting him halfway across your own country and across the border unhindered.

The political class missed the damaging significance of the abduction of Kizza Besigye in Nairobi, and for that alone, on the issue of patriotism, they owe Kenyans, especially the youth, a very long moment of silence.

It also demeans national pride and any sense of patriotism when a nation is turned into a playground of foreign security agents as has been witnessed in the last few months. We can’t play small and expect greatness at the same time.

We cannot be small in Nairobi and turn up big in Addis Ababa or Kampala. Indeed, there is a good chance that experienced neighbors, including those who have led across both ends of the Cold War, blush when they see some of our naiveties playing out on the international stage.

It can also be said that some of the country’s departed leaders must be turning in their graves at the mere thought of foreign security agents running shows in Nairobi estates.

They must be asking; what if this was the seventies when the northeastern part of Kenya was threatening to secede? Or when Idi Amin was talking of pushing the Uganda-Kenya border to Naivasha? Just imagine the 80s when civil wars were reigning around the region? Scary scenarios.

And so, on patriotism, politicians, especially those in government, must offer only one thing – silence.