Sovereignty my left armpit, mscheeew!

The tragedy with us Africans is after we swindle our people, maim and kill them, we always search and dust the old tattered PanAfricanist card to play. Quite convenient isn't it? - blame it on the white man, blame it on imperialism, neocolonialism, globalization whatever you like to call it right. 

You can say a million but the US and those other countries you laughably attempt to compare Kenya to, for not being signatories to the ICC, scarcely need Den Haag. Their judicial systems (with their inadequacies) do not allow morons, coldhearted scumbags and chest thumping criminals, murders and rapists like the ones we got here in Kenya to commit atrocities and get away with it. I can say this - they do not need international judicial mechanisms so much as we do. Yes we 'moral high horse ridding' Africans. Their political systems do not allow even an adulterous CEO to keep office, let alone a politician to even contemplate running for political office with accusations of crimes against humanity hanging around their necks. Ask Herman Cain, Ask Dominic Strauss Khan ... 

Hate it or love it, the day you allowed clowns accused of grave violations on human rights and dignity to wear party colors, show up on national TV and gallivant the country campaigning to be president is the day you allowed the sovereignty of the so free 'Kenya' you are 'fettishly' obsessed with to be ridiculed molested and demeaned. 

People ran for office in full knowledge of the consequences of being answerable to the ICC and discharging state duties simultaneously. Kid only the naive, the captives of sycophancy and ethnocentric twaddle who like to believe that the President and his deputy sitting at the Hague answering to criminal charges (like any other Kenyan would at the high court away from their families or jobs) really should worry anybody.

After all, who eats sovereignty? How much sovereignty is served on dinner tables in the evening in Kenyan households? What have you done with the sovereign Kenya for the past 5 decades? How much foreign direct investment has sovereignty brought to our economy? How many jobs? uh? How many destitute kids has it assured food, clothing, good health? How many mothers has it prevented from still births and dangerous maternal illness?  

The sovereignty that Africans deserved over the past 50 years, they have gotten. What they have done with it is for you to judge. These same losers now cry-babying are the same busybodies that applauded and appended signatures to a law that they scarcely took time to understand, to interrogate its motives and to judge its merits. Today, fourteen years down the lane, when we sadly determine that the egg we naively fertilized is too big for our cervix to deliver, we suddenly have a sovereignty problem. A problem too great, so urgent and verily important that the escalating cost of living and the lingering unemployment, poverty and inequality in the country can wait.

Ha! I say go shove it up folks. You have more important things to worry about. The perceived danger to your sovereignty is a mockery of the hopes and aspirations of your people. Take that 'African Renaissance' balderdash to the bin Kabando wa Kabando. Fix the economy, give husbands jobs, assure young people of their future, allow women equal opportunity to determine their destinies (and some money to shop and enjoy womanhood YAWA), let children enjoy their childhood, allow families the economic freedom to live life and appreciate their culture, ethnicity and heritage. That, mes camarades, is how to build a sovereign nation. Not by shamelessly playing to the gallery of international politics where no one gives a rap about your act.

Let those who committed crimes face the full force of the law. Let those innocent, wrongly accused, be acquitted and apologized to. Let us ACCEPT and MOVE ON.  

#Someone Tell CNN

#SomeoneTellCNN has been trending in Kenya for more than 12 hours now. Well this was a demand by Kenya's ‘twittosphere’ who agree that CNN was inept and out-rightly unfair to the Kenyan nation on its reporting of the grenade explosions that occurred at Country Bus Station in downtown Nairobi in the evening of Saturday 10^th March 2012 for a formal apology from CNN.

Frankly, I live in Nairobi and was less than 5 miles away from the site of the grenade explosion that CNN referred to in this erroneous ‘news scoop’ and there are two things; a fact and the other a falsehood that I’d like anyone who reads this post to appreciate.

Fact: - Three hand grenades were thrown out of a moving car that exploded and killed three instantly, another three succumbed to injuries at the Kenyatta National Hospital and 68 others sustained injuries from the explosion.

Fiction: - David McKenzie’s allusion that a wave of VIOLENCE had revisited Kenya

This is the typical case of unfair bad reporting of events that happen in Africa by international media: An obviously exaggerated and blown out of proportion account of a grenade attack that the government of Kenya is investigating and already linked to the infamous rogue Somali militia – Al Shabab. Listen folks at CNN, get it from me, KENYA IS PEACEFUL, there is no VIOLENCE as portrayed by David McKenzie yesterday. What happened was an isolated case that obviously didn’t warrant the amount of publicity that was granted by CNN. If I worked for CNN, I would have reported to you how a desperate cornered militia group attempted to disturb peace in Nairobi and how Kenya is dealing with it; how the rest of the country is largely serene despite the attacks. Or better still I would report to you the milestones that Kenyan athletes were accomplishing  in Istanbul, Turkey at the IAAF indoor games at the moment of the explosion.   

As he went ahead to deny having used the word VIOLENCE on air during the live broadcast, the banner screaming ‘VIOLENCE IN KENYA’ that accompanied it betrayed his alibi and irked the millions of Kenyans on twitter. It spoke volumes to the huge audience he was targeting. With all due respect David McKenzie and CNN succeed in unearthing the dark moments in the history of Kenya that we’ve struggled to deal with, a portrait that has cost us fortunes in economic terms and a priceless image of peace that we will forever owe our future generations. Whoever is aware of the violence that rocked Kenya in 2007/2008 after disputed elections definitely had a memory refresher that is hard to undo! 

Though Kenyans on twitter have boldly posited their dissatisfaction and demanded an apology from CNN (follow this link for a transcript http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56VuSrYSSWE) I think an apology cannot be the ultimate. Am trying to soberly argue with whoever is responsible for editing news at CNN: could you please develop the habit of doing a lot more serious background work before you hurry to grab a 'news scoop' and make fools of yourselves.  I am not a trained journalist but I keep wondering: Why is it so difficult to be objective and truthful about what is reported about happenings in Africa? Yes, Africa has her share of challenges: poverty, bad governance, violence etc but what kills Africa most today is the bad IMAGE and bad publicity every African state has got to deal with. This out-rightly irresponsible and contemptuous trend in reporting African affairs must stop.

Come on folks, we are struggling to market Africa here. We are trying to attract investment and people for tourism. This pessimistic countenance sure makes things much harder. Stop portraying Africa as the home of EVIL, SQUALOR and all manner of negatives. Image is very integral for the African Renaissance and so as much as David MacKenzie might have offered a half hearted 136 character apology to Kenyans on twitter, the bad image he conveyed to billions of CNN audience can obviously not be reversed. The damage is done.  It will cost loads more to change the perception of the Swiss couple that was making travel arrangements to come to Kenya for holiday; to regain the confidence of the Chinese businessman who was finalising portfolio preparations and correspondence ahead of an investment meet in Kenya and of course much more to win the will of the Canadian student that was winding up preparations to travel to Kenya for a months long research.

No amount of apology on CNN can possibly cure that.