A year like no other in our lifetime
An angry father scolding his son.
What you need to know:
- We live in a context of noise and clutter; our lives are becoming unconsidered.
- Our security and prosperity as a corpus is the responsibility of every individual.
I recently heard one of my children ask: “Now, who is the parent and who is the child in this house?” This question can be viewed in a variety of ways.
One, that my children have run amok and have take over my house. Second, that the children have been given so many responsibilities that the parents are generally on scholarship and spend their time eating nuts on the sofa and watching Trump on CNN.
And, finally, it may well be that I’ve brilliantly executed an empowerment strategy which enables the children to feel they carry the burden of parental responsibility.
The truth is probably a lot more mundane. These folks grew up and maybe the people around did not notice.
I’ve been on this earth for half a century, but there has not been a year like this one. It’s not just the risk of disease and the ever present danger of death. It’s the long period of separation and being cut off from those who are dear and near to us and the opportunities it affords for reflection and introspection. When did you last spend time on your own?
We live in a context of noise and clutter; our lives are becoming unconsidered. I have had a lot of time to think about stuff this horrible year and there are five things that I can say are the truths about our life as a country.
They are probably not terribly new or surprising; they are just my contribution to a national debate around our values and what we should do to our constitution now that we’re giving signatures to support a review.
Childish conviction
First, its really down to us, there is no knight in shining armour. Our survival depends on us, so does our welfare. For 50 years, Africa has clung to this dependency googa — you are going to have to watch Eddie Murphy’s 2009, ImagineThat to get the meaning of that, I’ll not tell you — and the almost childish conviction that “someone” will fix it for us, whether it is corruption, a strange virus, tanking economies, buffoons stealing elections in broad daylight or shooting the citizenry for no good reason.
No one is going to come and fix our problems; even those who claim to be here to do it are not necessarily altruistic.
Once we realise that fact, then we take responsibility for our things. We should feel a sense of failure when things don’t go right, we should celebrate when things go right. Because it’s our job to mind our own communities, society and nation.
Second, we have valuable stuff around here that bears protecting. We have, comparatively, a good economy, we have natural resources, a strong labour force and a culture of entrepreneurship.
Our security and prosperity as a corpus is the responsibility of every individual. Our lives, those of our families and our property rest on that security.
I visited Moscow years ago and wherever I went, there was a militiaman with an AK-47 outside and inside, whether it was a kiosk or restaurant, someone would go through your passport and other documents page by page.
And they did it with such a keenness that you could see they were not doing it because they were compelled; it was a sense of duty. I’m not saying we descend to that level.
I’m saying we create an awareness that we have a lot to lose, including our lives, unless we take an interest in our own safety. I’m saying don’t walk around without a mask and if someone does, take them to task.
Thirdly, I’ve come to accept that there is a layer of Kenyans that is so avaricious and wasteful that, as long as it’s allowed to exist, our country will never get anywhere.
People imagine that civil servants are incompetent, lazy, given to leaving their jackets to do the job while spending the whole day cutting deals.
The civil servants I’ve interacted with will surprise you: they are not only supremely qualified and competent, they have an excellent sense of duty and patriotism. They will occasionally eat a per diem here and there, but it’s usually earned. The problem is that layer I spoke of.
Dangerous region
Fourth, we exist in a strange, dangerous region. One country has not had a functioning government for nearly 30 years, another one is on the brink of collapse, torn between two vicious warlords, others go to an election with a predetermined winner and a population suppressed by the military.
Even Ethiopia, the proud imperial entity African nationalists idolise, has just declared war against itself. It’s a tough neighbourhood. How do we survive?
Finally, the future is not promised. I read a story in the New Yorker magazine this past week about a philosopher called Toby Ord, who has spent his life studying the risks to the survival of our species. He says we live in a period of our history he calls “the precipice” which started in 1945 with the successful detonation of a nuclear device and will end either with the extinction of our species or with humanity learning to work together for our common survival. Many of us thought humans are going to be around forever. Well, not quite.
But I can’t still figure out why the children are asking who is the boss around the house.
