Moral choices a personal issue

Judging from two different news items this week, Kenyans, it would appear, are well-steeped in hedonism and they must be controlled through presidential fiat or draconian legislation lest the country turns into a latter-day Sodom and Gomorrah.

First, they are avid consumers of pornography and want everyone around to like smut, and second, when they are not watching dirty movies, they want to drink alcohol all night without interference.

Of course, setting aside the deliberate hyperbole, they won’t be allowed any of those things which are the most unproductive pursuits possible, and the most ruinous to individuals and their families. So when Garissa Town MP Aden Duale proposes a Bill to forbid the sharing of pornographic material on the Internet and recommends draconian measures to curb the vice (25 years in jail or Sh20 million fine or both), he is not exactly introducing anything new; all he wants is to make such activities extremely painful to the perpetrators. We don’t know what specific experience prompted him to sponsor the Bill, but he will likely tell us when it comes up for debate.

Now, for Mr Duale to propose such measures, he must have done his homework and realised that the Cyber Crimes Act is, in part, an impotent piece of legislation, hence the need for the Computer Misuse and Cyber Crimes (Amendment) Act, 2020.

 But it must be understood that what he is proposing to do is not really earthshaking; he merely seeks to amend a comprehensive Act that lists at least 32 other offences constituting cybercrime, and the kind of punishment they deserve.

Child pornography

In fact, it is not clear what the brouhaha is all about since pornography in Kenya is already illegal. What he has done is to adopt the law against child pornography, which attracts severe sanctions worldwide, and extend the stringent sanctions against it to adults.

But, looking at the matter broadly, if an adult wants to waste his time watching his age mates fornicating and then sending the images to his friends, it is not the same as disseminating such images to children or filming the young ones “engaging in sexually explicit conduct”.

 That is probably why organisations like Atheists in Kenya and eminent jurists are against the amendments, arguing that such a measure would be tantamount to foisting specious morality on adults. They are probably right, but there is a danger that such content may fall into a child’s possession.

While it is true that some individuals have a dirty habit of infringing on other people’s privacy and using such images for blackmail or public embarrassment, trying to outlaw pornography per se among adults will be futile. What people do in private should not be the concern of anyone else, least of all government spooks.

In any case, no power on earth can police millions of Kenyans who choose to engage in such peculiar pursuits unless they affect others. You cannot ban pornography. The only way it can happen is to ban the Internet altogether or to dismantle the hundreds of websites that carry filthy content.

Sending hard porn to your pastor would not be nice but even that should not be equated with child pornography. Mr Duale may be doing the right thing, but one hopes he is not merely trying to shield the few members of the political class caught with their pants down. There is a need to rethink this amendment and make the punishment fit the crime.

As for those Kenyans agitating for the curfew hours to be relaxed so that they can drink without police poking their noses into matters of the throat, they probably have a point. There is still no proof that drinking alcohol until 11pm instead of 9pm contributes significantly to a rise in Covid-19 infections although, of course, alcohol does induce both jovial proximity and casual carelessness.

More pertinent are the woes of bar-owners and proprietors of hospitality joints. They have been hurting badly for a whole year due to reduced sales and they deserve a break.

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Last week I was forced into exile in my rural home after two bouts of heavy rains — the first one a rare hailstorm — drenched Kajiado North where I live, sent electricity into a deep funk and there was no power for the next six days.

Things became so bad that I had to flee the stench from a week’s worth of food rotting in the fridge, and all this time, not a word from Kenya Power to explain just what went wrong.

For that reason, today I join those social media warriors calling for switching off Kenya Power; it has turned into a gluttonous behemoth with zero accountability.

The damage that a six-day blackout does to the economy is incalculable and the inconvenience to the consumers outrageous. Something must be done to end the monopoly the utility firm enjoys otherwise we shall keep lamenting that the first sign of rain is when the lights suddenly go off.

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