Social Media and the Kenyan Elections

The role of social media in politics has risen in the 21 century especially with what was witnessed in the Arab springs, and the Occupy movement in Nigeria and the United States of America. It has been seen as a moving force in political revolutions and a new era that threatens conservative elitist politics. But as it is being celebrated as the new age democratizing force doubts are already being raised. Occupy movement in Russia barely managed anything when Putin was re-elected, Syria is in throes of self-annihilation yet the world questions if the posts on twitter and Facebook can be relied upon to justify international intervention, Kenya made a go at occupy parliament but it was held by traffic on computer screens after being a trending topic on twitter in the world. It begs a question if social media is a mover of political upheaval in the middle class or if it only plays a secondary role and gets credit for cheering on and spectating.

As Kenya approaches the 2013 elections the role of social media is anticipated to be integral. With all serious contenders operating social network accounts, it is seen as a battle ground of some sorts for valuable middle class votes. But to what extent is this true?

One, recent opinion polls show that when the elections go to the wire it will be tribal. How then will social media get votes when they have already been consolidated by virtue of tribe? Two social media is basically a preserve of the middle class and as witnessed in the nomination process, occupy parliament, election date and several outrageous legislative decisions, social media users have only protested to their computer screens and rarely come out and walk the talk. They leave the voting to the crass of the society who vote based on handouts and tribe with little regard to revolutionized political agenda.

However we cannot rule out social media, Boniface Mwangi f picha mtaani has been able to rally urban youth to protest before parliament and deliver petitions which have rarely been implemented. The mavulture slogan has gained impetus on social media besides gracing walls in Nairobi graffiti. With all this in perspective, social media will play a role notably in the areas discussed below.

Constitutional attrition

The government has declared war on free speech which is basically what the constitution was out to safeguard. Through Communication Commission of Kenya the government has declared vigilance on blogs and social media content. It went out rightly and accused individuals pronto on live television like Makau Mutua. The government stated it will liaise with international bodies to monitor content track IP addresses and arrest users of social media.

This will cripple free speech and discourage discourse that social media was supposed to help bring to fore. In as much as the government is pursuing ‘hate speech’ it is the jury and executioner of what the extent of posts that constitute this crime just as they did with national security during Moi’s days of terror and we saw what good job they did at that.

Political platform

Social media will notably be a platform for political activism and to extreme cases fundamentalism. All manner of political opinion will be airedunbridled including sound contribution to tribal and malicious hate speech. Middle class social activism has found voices in groups like picha mtaani, mavulture, wanjiku revolt, kot (Kenyans on twitter) and many more. Supporters of certain politicians have started fan pages where they specialize in political propaganda and popularization of these politicians. Politicians themselves have public relations machinery in social media which constantly address issues in their demeanor as they arise and build an image for themselves.

But as I have argued ab initio this will marginally woo voters who already have fixed mind. Kenyans have not yet ostracized tribalism. Social media users will not give much thought to political discourse in social media and vote like the crass of the society based on tribe and popularity. Issue based politicians like Martha Karua have been subjectedto mainstream media blackout as would be expected alternative media like the social media to provide this platform it turns out not. Social media discussions tend to focus on the prominent contenders like Raila and Uhuru and the platform is as biased as mainstream media. Thus social media will play along with little contribution in terms of changing the dynamics of the political arena but just being another cat in the bag.

News delivery in real time

The biggest contribution of social media will be spread of information. People will tally results in real time. Where in past elections people heavily relied on mainstream media this time people will rely on social media with results being shared across the country.

This will cut both ways in terms of impact. It will serve to enable Kenyans know their verdict pronto but it might also flare up emotions if things were to go to the dogs like the 2007 polls. Mainstream media are guided by ethics and gatekeeping and the government banned live broadcasts during 2007 posts poll chaos, this does not apply to social media. Raw unedited footage will be posted on you tube, photos of whatever is happening on the ground shared on twitter and Facebook for the world to see. This might fan the violence. However it will also be used as it is being used to spread peace messages and organize vigilance for democracy.

Discourse and reality for 2017

Social media will play an important role in determining future elections in Kenya. It is from mistakes that will be made this election (like middle class failing to vote or impact change) that discourse on social media will jump off computer screens into action. It is inherent to note that social media did not start the Arab Spring but Bouazizi’s self-emollition and the fact that Algerians were ready for change. Social media will not change the dynamics of Kenyan politics but Kenyans will change and social media will tag along Justas it is tagging along as we make political mistake.

East Africans

As a child a border was a fence, a wall, a separator and sitting on the fence meant practically having to withstand the gashing spikes of thorns or glass on stone walls, throes of indecision.

I traveled to Busia hoping to walk along the perimeter wall, like Berlin or Greatwall of China and see what strange people lived across it whose president ate people and dumped lame men into Lake Victoria that when you fished you were more likely to get a watch or a ring in a fish, so fish were carnivorous?

But in Busia I met a gate, then nothing.

No border no fence, no strange people in fact they were too familiar, spoke even my own language better. So a border was actually nothing, air kaput!

Peculiarly too I met the first East Africans, the Baamani clan of the Bakhayo. They are the Maasai across Kenya and Tanzania, the Somali sprawled in space across Kenya and Somalia, they are the Teso  on either  side of Mt. Elgon, the Hutus and Tutsis and Rwanda and Burundi, the Merile and Karamoja. The people on borders, on nothing, on air kaput.

Here their land stretches and pans downs and ups, is split by rivers and ownership, but no line nothing air kaput.

Here they call Uganda Ingerekha ‘The Other side’ vaguely, there and not here. The clan is everywhere the other side and here and there.

They tell me what makes one a Kenyan or a Ugandan is an ID card. Its where for convenience you think you have a better shot at life. So a son can be a Ugandan a father a Kenyan a brother both. Well it doesn’t change where they live nor what they know about themselves. A young man failed in Kenyan form four exams, he went to Uganda for form five and six and became a Ugandan.

Here currency operates like a forex bureau, you do not have to mind which one you have as long as u understand the exchange rates and you know a little arithmetic. Either side operates either currencies. Anyway they are both shillings if you get rid of the prefix (Uganda and Kenya)

Here politics is also twofold, with the feeling of lack of democracy felt just within a year of the feeling of chaotic elections, Uganda votes just one year before Kenya.

It is here, where there is no border, just air, nothing kaput, that a people, East Africans, Maasai, Somalis, Itesos, Merile, Karamojong, Sabaot, Luhyas etcetera etcetera live in one country in two countries.

Serenading East Africa

Weary with war

Come lay by my feet

And find peace

Discriminated and depraved

Disintegrating in secession

Come ye and find justice here

Torn a part by tribe

Torn apart by religion

Come glued in our shared history

And find a future

Robbed by modern Cecil Rhodes treaties

By an open market with barricaded doors

Come ancient traders and trade in

Our market

This is East Africa

Land of shared destiny

Multiple identities

A pan African Federation is imminent

Impending Hegemony

A friend of mine warned me about the end of the world one morning. Being naturally a skeptic of religion I was lent to believe that he was deluded by teachings of fear. And as a supposed he was luring me from what he thought was my biggest devil. Alcohol. So when he talked about the pale horse in Egypt and the biblical premonitions of the end times. I was comfortable with the cynic explanations in the press about camera angles and the blurry photos that might have just scared the world.

But then again there was something in his warning that could not just be abandoned. I thought though more practically than the religious fanatics he is lent to. There are people out there, white who were fanatical enough to actualize the teachings of their religion. And then I decided to use precedence and see if actually the world can end at this point in time.

I drew the following theses and in as much as I wake up every morning to dismiss it, it sounds real every day more real than I could allow myself to imagine it.

In recent times there have been several revolutions in the Arab World. Sometimes history becomes too coincidental and we are forced to ask questions. Why the Muslim world and why now. Why force even states which were as stable and developed as Libya into this turmoil why create so many Somali states up north. And most importantly to whose interest.

The world is closely controlled by the interest of the few developing nations and they cannot just loose it in pressure for change as they would have us believe. Egypt was practically America and how dispensable was it, especially to Moslem Brothers who are anti west?

Now the revolutions have gone deep into the Middle East and most comfortable monarchies that were less vigilant are falling to extremist groups. Religious fundamentalists are virtually coming to power in most of Arabia something the west purported to fight for so long.

I was willing to ignore all this as coincidences when the ace was tossed. Osama was killed. I did not believe it but instead of pointing out the too much contradicting evidences or the lack of, I went to examine the question that plagued my mind. Why retire Osama now.

He could have been disposed years ago. Practically I came to realize that the world’s most feared man is not so dangerous after all. He is practically credited with bombing Nairobi and claiming responsibility over the twin towers bombings besides driving Russians out of Afghanistan. His great terror organization for over ten years has Kikambala, Kampala and a handful of real terrorist activity. As observed by Eric Hobsobawm the terror threat is grossly overestimated.

But why now. Well a quote in Immortal Technique's response to bin laden’s death jolted me into my theses

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the man who called for any means or method of attacking the Russians during the Afghan Jihad, was heavily criticized after the attacks of 9/11 for his callous looking down upon the issues that could arise from U.S. support for Islamic militants. But he left a quote that resonated with me, “Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.”

Now Osama is out of the picture leaving behind his atrocious affiliates who want to avenge him. This has cumulated with widespread fear of al Qaida reparations and everyone is looking out for retaliatory attacks. This will surely come. And as Immortal Technique rightly visualized it is easy to hate a foreseen enemy and disastrous to hate a group of people thought of as the enemy. When they attack we would no longer be hunting a man, Osama but a group al Qaeda. This faceless group will be one and the same with the people within whom it exists. Al Qaeda will be one and the same with the Moslem world. Thus the widely perceived direct external threat to America and more so the world.

Then throw in the extremists of the Arab revolution, aided and engineered by the so called fundamentalist groups aided by the west. Nobody to shield Israel even in Lebanon and Syria. Throw in Iran and an unstable Iraq. Afghanistan with withdrawn troops from America. This spells chaos. The most natural thing will be for the new strengthened Muslim neighborhood to attack its age old enemy. Israel.

With the al-Qaida attacks on American vassals like Kenya and the pending attack on Israel then the world’s mortal enemy becomes Muslims. Viewed as an attack on Christians is how the media will sell it to us. We will allow mindless consent of military action against the Muslim threat and significantly so when Ahmedibijan purportedly has a chemical weapon. If he uses it, even to defend against our attack on his backdoor, he will have ignited the nuclear war that has been long overdue. The third world war.

The football will be opened and with the hands of America the world as we know it will end. The war so gross and blamed on religion will allow us to want to eliminate military governments and place security in one unified body that will have emerged as our universal savior. The ‘impartial’ and arbitrating UN. One world, under one government, religious less, godless, so illuminati.

But the puzzle does not fit too right as I have demonstrated. Where does China come in? I hope I will figure it out soon.

After 2013 polls

We all have divergent views of our future from the boda boda to the ceo's  but our destiny is tied to our proximity, we live in Kenya. I want anyone's opinion on what they think will happen next year or stories you have heard from anyone on what they think will happen next year after election. my friend told me we will be under military rule another told me his grandad thinks we will go back to colonial rule. i want raw thoughts, sincere foresight real and imagined.From This i hope to compile the views in a story which i will post here. mail otiatoguguyu@yahoo.com. Thanks

The Global World is Not the Same

One in every three Africans have access to the little energy which is equivalent to the gigawats produced in Spain alone according to the world bank as they take stock of MDGs and design new ones.

This is a clear demonstration that while they thump their chest over the minimal human standards we as the third world have barely managed to achieve that development is a big farce. Recently reading Erhard Eppler (1971) he estimates that it would take 359 years and 1,356 years for Peru and Pakistan to catch up with developed nations if the developed nation stagnate I realized that development as it has been sold to Africa is both irrational and delusory and the rhetoric that continues to surround it is misleading. Development either as a means of catching up through miniature achievements is a carrot on the stick and the piecemeal marshal plan in Africa is a lie what with the immense forces that resist its industrialization sanctioning unclean energy when that is the only way we could industrialize and the chokehold over nuclear power as witnessed in Iran, the trade treaties that have defined our role in world economy as the raw material supplier and sub standard goods consumers of Multinational Corporations and developed states.

Africa has not earned its seat in the world and our reality is grossly different from the rest of the world.

But it’s this condescending insinuation that will help Africa develop once it sees openly that this carrot stick hope and international conspiracy to stay in your placeism for what it really is. We do not share you perspectives and a few minutes chatting amongst ourselves on Facebook or following your tweets does not make the world global and ready for global civics.

We do not have a seat in the world and our responsibility to the citizens in the wider world is insignificant if not unnecessary. For people who too hungry that such ideas as global sameism is beyond their rationale. People who watch every American political debates and yet know that majority of Americans think their continent is a country. Who when they kill five lions after the beasts maul their families and livelihood have the world cry foul over the lions more than them (their life is that insignificant) for  people locked in constant conflict for resources that are barely there then the global sameism idea does not sell.

Until Africa earns its seat among the world powers and share s a reality with the rest of the world will we be able to discuss our responsibility to other world humans or be empowered enough to claim our rights. Not until 3 in 3 Africans can access electricity and emit as much waste as an average American does will this global idea sell in our realm of the hemisphere, but then again the world cant sustain that and you know that’s why it will never be allowed to happen.

So we will continue to plant trees and balance developed world pollution, we will continue to believe that clean wind energy will industrialize Africa and most of all we will let you decide global civics with your realities as yardsticks (which will take us 1,356 years to get at par) and accept our responsibility to the world as your farmers and labour exporters and feeding you condescending idea that globalization has created a similar status quo around the world and we share your conditions in a global sameism

It’s a bad time to think, freely, how did we get here.

Kenya is at the brink of an election and tribal thoughts are like defecations stuck in our constipated bowels. Now we want to pretend that there is no problem yet we know all too well that we are headed for doom and we are too frightened even to say it.

In as much as I abhor violence critically it’s an expression and as much as I would rather join the bandwagon and blame someone anyone, the Hague four perhaps, the principals perhaps, the tribes perhaps, I do not. I acknowledge that one, violence is aggravation finding voice in the most retrogressive human temperament which is in all of us sated only by what we think is rational reinforced by morals and virtues of society and fear (that others surpasses and might actually annihilate our own and ourselves)

In this period when we are afraid if we say something it might come out in bad taste and have Kibunja the Patriot come knocking for hate speech like a school prefect with a disk (for those who spoke mother tongue, Swahili and broken English in our primary and high school days). In this period when any anecdote associated with tribe is held back, it’s not very conducive for free thought objective analysis or real perspectives for that matter.

We do understand that in the run up to 2007 post poll chaos we were so brazen calling each other by our christened tribal insults. And it is right to think that if this time we do not say these repulsive labels we might be safe, but are we thinking them. Are these same resentments now in a more secret confines unvoiced unknown yet just boiling inside some of our vilest societal inclusions.

At this time we cannot asses a situation political or otherwise without someone trying to read malice in what we say. We have to be careful and take down any tribal anecdotes present or imagined.

This posses a great risk to free thought to the extent that we are so tongue tied by the situation so that truth even to ourselves is abhorable. And society including us are after blaming anyone and we do not want to be on the wrong side of the pointed finger.

And who brought us here? Ourselves.

We have been so contented in blaming politicians for everything. But after last polls when politicians were merely clawing to remain above the water and had left us alone in the grassroots and we let our animalism express itself when we realized that power was un-seated neither here nor there and we could escape with a little unlawfulness, a little anarchy. When we lost control of our own brutality and the police (just like us) thought they could be humans and let their emotions and harboured wish to try out on human targets started shooting blood bayed for blood, greed for looting, envy for tribe us against us, no politicians. Now politicians too scared lest they are blamed are no longer talking because everybody said it was them who made us fight and because we know the truth that we did unto ourselves. Now that politicians are no longer talking we hope that this silence is a cure, I call it self-delusion

Now more than ever we have become mind readers and interpreters of unsaid nuances by our politicians and lately tribal musicians. Now all a politician has to say is ‘them’ and a crowd goes berserk baying for blood.

Yea we have chosen not to say what is in our hearts but in concealing this graveness we have not buried real truths and brutalities.

We are unable to approach this question of tribalism with the brazenness it deserves. if free thought cannot be attained due to fear of repressions then as a society we might never be able to ask ourselves the unsettling questions both humane and specific to Kenya that attracted our brutality against each other and might damn as yet again.

Another election? Honestly?

Uhuru and Ruto should not vie for presidency not because of integrity of lack of but simply because they have a case in the Hague.

Why are we so afraid of facing the reality that we have to circumvent to some vague aphorisms like integrity to see the obvious. One Jesus was full of integrity but he had a case that saw him get nailed, if he was standing for president I would clear him for elections but then again he ends up dead and we have to do another election.

Let us be honest with ourselves we are not Sudan where one  man counts the shots and can refuse to go to the Hague just because he is president. This is Kenya with a new constitution a powerful legislature a reformed judiciary and indeed an educated masses. If either of the Hague suspects becomes president and have to face charges well probably impeach them and have another elections after this one not to forget the probable runoff. Man no wonder we are said to be fond of politicking.

It’s a reformist idea to put an integrity bar on leadership but it is also a deluded idealism to imagine that any politician can pass the acid test.

Leadership as is and has always been is borne of mans inferiority to authority a sotto desire to obey superiority or a higher morality. It is pegged in qualities of a person the larger majority endears to but are insufficient off.

It is either in a brutal sense euphoria towards an individual with wealth, demagogue, from a dynasty (hereditary principality) or simply a hope giver who promises to better the lives of the masses as he has proverbially seen the promised land.

And however concealed in the beautiful drapes of democracy, in the vicious reality of autocracy or in the deserverdness of aristocracy/subtleness of oligarchy leadership is only for those whom we see things lacking in us and believe through setting them on the pedestal their benevolence will drip down.

We can get skeletons out of everybody’s closet anyway, Obama smoked bhang! We all did things that we will live to regret quoth Freidrich Nietzsche the consequences of our actions will come to haunt us without knowing that in the meantime we had ‘reformed’

So integrity should not bar candidates from vying per se but the consequences of their injurious actions. If some candidate did a crime what are the implications? If he stands to be convicted then why let them vie but if a private citizen state or international power have not instituted events that might lead to incarceration and thus necessities another unwarranted elections then why stop the candidates.

If we are to move on let us leave our emotions at the door and be rational, even this once