By Dikembe
Is the coming of Obama the end of Jubilee western fear-mongering as we know it in Kenya?
One of the stump lines of UhuRuto presidential campaigns was the sheer amount of resources dedicated to western bashing. More than the ethnic outfit it was, the Jubilee ticket was founded primarily on a desire to defeat ‘western institutions’ meddling in ‘our internal affairs’.
The CORD coalition which didn’t attack our traditional western partners were accused of puppetry and pandering to neocolonialists. The win by Uhuru and Ruto, the country was told, would be a defeat of western neocolonialists and their local surrogates.
It was not just the jubilee politicians ranting on what was otherwise a non-existent ‘siege’ on our country. The media, led by Daily Nation Mt. Kenya columnists -folks like Peter Kagwanja, Gitau Warigi, Macharia Munene and Macharia Gaitho -relished in peddling the propaganda.
Today, this group of Kenyans are again the folks leading in telling the rest of us how to ‘behave’ when Obama lands here. Is the coming of Obama, therefore, an end to their past war-mongering and fear mongering and hate-mongering?
Will they now stop telling their fanatical supporters that the millions of dollars in USAid are not money meant to ‘destabilise’ their government, but to improve health and education and alleviation of hunger and strengthening of our institutions of democracy and human rights -civil society and NGOs?
Have they learnt from their past follies and pretentious righteousness?
I still maintain that Jubilee propagandists -formal and informal -in government and mainstream media, shameless as they are; should be the least to tell us how to think and act towards any western leader.
We were the folks who remained on the side of our western allies as Jubilee detoured to hate-mongering. We were the citizens who did not forget that our shared history with the western world was not premised on the whims of one man, or two men, facing their ‘personal challenges’. We were the guys who received the beating and the hating and the daily taunts and tantrums of zealous pinheads on the jubilee side.
And yet, even as they degenerated national discourses in their campaigns to trivialities and sideshows, even as they consumed the whole country in the worst hate campaign ever waged in post-independent Kenya, we remained calm, convincing 5 million people (and more) that we were better off with our western friends on our side in this tumultuous second decade of a young 21st century.
At the height of their arrogance and grandstanding, it was us, not them, who saw off returning ambassadors and thanked them for their duty here. It was us who paid gratitude to that outgoing German Ambassador he refused to host, claiming that Germany wanted to jail him. It was us who didn’t prop up China as an ‘alternative’, for as far back as 1960, we were already friends with China, knowing so well that our country was better off having no master -just allies and partners- in the international scheme of things.
I will repeat it proudly; they have no business telling us how to behave. Rather, it is them to behave, and behave so well, for they harbour some of the worst atavistic ideas imaginable in these modern times.
Let them behave, Obama is coming.
Dikembe Disembe is a pro-CORD blogger on Kenya Today.
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