Defamation is product of failure and symptom of incompetence

A group of editors, including your favourite columnist, have been trending on social media this past week, accused of being toadies, factoti, sycophants and generally in the pay of President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Mr Kenyatta is himself impaled on the horns of hashtags, bots and faceless internet traffic multipliers.

There are many Kenyans who believe everything they read on social media. Please remember them in your prayers.

As a general practice, it is not a good idea to engage anonymous defamatory attackers because, when you do, you mainstream their attacks and grant them, and their scurrilous attacks, credibility.

But I want to exercise editorial licence and comment on these attacks for two reasons. First, bloggers, and the defamation industry in general, are deeply embedded in Kenya’s corporate culture, in the national security services and in powerful political campaigns and top offices of the country.

The second is rooted in my identity as an African tribesman. The division of labour and chain of succession in my tribe dictates that an elder rules with his sons. As a young man, you shut up, make war, steal cattle and generally be the iron fist of the cabal of old men who hold sway over your clan and the tribe.

As you grow older and become an elder, you speak, others listen. You teach, direct, advise, guide, analyse, reflect, negotiate, reconcile. You also “drink” of the cattle stolen for you by your sons. What am I saying? I have a responsibility to speak.

I am in the cabal.

First, I believe it is bad form for an editor to sue for defamation. As people who earn a living by poking our nose in other people’s business, we should be willing to take a few knocks. Editors shouldn’t be petty, of fragile ego, and should be strong enough and have the sense of humour to take what they dish out. I have, in the past couple of months, seriously considered going to court, Lord help me, and I hope I will succeed in resisting the overpowering urge to fight.

For the record, the persons making allegations against editors, and here I am speaking for myself, are professional liars. I have not received gifts from any person, I am not a member of a circle of editors supporting anyone, my interview with the President — which I enjoyed and hope to repeat at some point — like all news services at the Nation, was totally free.

I have no reason to imagine that the other editors who were attacked have done anything wrong either.

The point I am making, and the reason I am writing about this, is that the blogger who attacks me on social media is sufficiently well-informed and very well connected in the security sector that they know what they are writing is false. The point of that writing is not the truth; it is the furtherance of a mainly political and commercial agenda. And that is a sobering reality.

Defamation is no longer the product of carelessness or malice — although there is that in buckets — but something more insidious and criminal. The defamation industry is now a formal extension of Kenyan corporate, political and national security architecture. It is not unusual for a business to engage the services of social media figures to intimidate and beat into submission customers, especially if they are claiming inconvenient rights.

It is normal for colleagues to resort to planting defamation on social media to damage a workmate for career advantage, revenge or just out of a lack of generosity of spirit.

And it is par for the course for figures in government to plant disinformation on social media as a way of manipulation.

Big lawyers in town, PR companies, even some security agencies, have nasty bloggers on their payroll. Bloggers and influencers are replacing traditional PR in the manufacture of fake image.

Defamation is a shortcut; it is the product of failure to effectively manage one’s interaction with the public. Dirty tricks are always a symptom of incompetence. Just like those people who withdraw advertising, shoot journalists and resort to other illegalities, when an entity is unable to tell its story, it buys a knife.

Narc, during its campaigns, went to the underworld and came out with vampires which it penned in its premises and used to terrify their rivals and infect the discourse with falsehoods. These vampires have not only run wild; they have multiplied in number. And many of them come from dark spaces: The pornography sector is a common source; a political ‘analyst’ or ‘commentator’ by day and handler of the dancing pole in the dark.

Democracy is a negotiated settlement. It is a rational process which, sometimes, leaves self-righteous and over-emotional activists and phony purists gasping for relevance. We must be statesmen and encourage politicians to be too. Let leaders talk to one another, let them negotiate a settlement rather than beating each other’s, and our, brains out. Defaming journalists is the easier part. Winning the election requires a little bit more than just defamation.

By the way, I am sorry but I am no longer the safest man in Kenya to defame.

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