By G Oguda
I have just received the news that Jim Bonnie is missing. He sent a distress text message many hours ago and his whereabouts are still unknown. It comes exactly 7 days after Cyrpian Nyakundi, another online activist, was bundled into a car and held incommunicado for hours.
It, officially, marks the return of state repression against those perceived to be sympathetic to the opposition.
In 1994, as Hutu rebels were jogging through the streets of Kigali hacking down minority Tutsis, the UN Security Council just sat there, for days, arguing on the correct definition of ‘genocide’. “While thousands of human beings were being hacked to death every day, ambassadors argued fitfully for weeks about military tactics.” Colin Keating, the New Zealand ambassador to the UN, remarked angrily as the discussions dragged on.
As a search party is being dispatched to the seven corners of the world to look for Jim Bonnie, there is an urgent need for the government to come clean on this matter. If you manged to fish out a vocal student activist deep in his Uganda hideout in record time, you, surely, can go through Nairobi with a rough toothcomb and get us Jim Bonnie unharmed.
Somebody knows where Jim Bonnie is. That somebody belongs to a select clique of hired functionaries who’s role is to cause distress to poor Kenyans playing their patriotic duty of keeping the government in check. That somebody is, probably, reading this post. They are as stupid and imbecilic as their latest actions in silencing hardworking ordinary folk.
Dennis Itumbi earned his name as a small-time hustler with a talent for crude propaganda. When he got a blogging job in government, he promised to watch over fellow bloggers who were still finding it tough scratching the surface under the searing heat of state-sponsored tyranny. It is Archbishop Desmond Tutu who said that if you’re neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. All those solidarity appearances in blogging award gala dinners was just for PR. The Luo have a saying; ‘the rat that nibbles your fingernails in the dead of the night is the same rat that will blow away your pain.’
General Sani Abacha executed Ken Saro-Wiwa for demanding the rights of his Ogoni people; “we are not asking for the moon, but the bare necessities of life.” The gods have a way of punishing those who make innocent people suffer. Abacha was found dead in his palace while in the arms of a pair of Indian prostitutes.
Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.
Leave a Reply