Post by adongo12345 on Nov 16, 2005 18:51:00 GMT 3
Slavery or freedom? The choice is in your hands
Standard Commentary: Nov. 16, 2005
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By Oduor Ongwen
I contemplated leading a delegation to President Kibaki to allocate the Kenyan side of Lake Victoria to my villagers and all the beaches therein to me as an aspiring community leader. However, good counsel prevailed and as a result I will remain poor. I instead want to abuse this space by engaging in self-praise. I do not subscribe to the English modesty of one not blowing one’s own trumpet. If you don’t blow your own trumpet, who would know you have a trumpet in the first place?
As a commentator, I have found it unfair to comment on the feedbacks I get from my readers since they are not equally advantaged with a guaranteed platform. The reaction by a reader to my account of and outrage at the horror of police brutality I witnessed first-hand in Kisumu on Saturday, October 29 has, however, made me elect to violate this self-imposed sanction. I was particularly incensed by the reader’s lack of human feelings for innocent lives lost and the trauma of the bereaved. He only saw a "Raila Stooge" in me.
I will focus on my personal experiences because I believe that the private and personal realm is where the community starts, and where the struggle begins. We are continually walking about with other activists, all of us talking about struggle and change, yet we rarely share our private thoughts, the personal reality that moves us beyond the ideals of the struggle, or change, or justice, to transformative action.
We are enjoined by a common cause, by the work and issues we share, and by the discourse that we have adopted to share on these issues. At the same time we are separated – by our private thoughts and experiences; by our personal dilemmas concerning life and the living of it; by the monologue that goes on in our head everyday; the conversation that no one hears but ourselves. It is imperative that we share the personal of the political – this monologue that we never get an opportunity to share in an environment of trust and solidarity.
My work has been privileged by the fact that I have been able to be a local activist at school, in the university, in prison, in my village, in the residential estate where I live, and nationally in Kenya, and at the same time, an international activist in the wider world. Locally, my work originally focused on student rights and general welfare, but quickly moved beyond this to focus on social inequalities, gender, race and class. This is also the focus of my international activism, which most recently has focused on global economic governance resulting in and reinforcing inequalities between and within nations. It has particularly centred on trade injustice, debt slavery and extraction and appropriation of primary commodities from Africa by transnational corporate interests.
My first serious contact with "real" activism at national level was in 1980 when as a pre-university chap (I was waiting to join the University in October that year) I joined a demonstration by university staff and students in honour of Walter Rodney. I then didn’t know who Rodney was, but speeches made rekindled in me rudimentary lessons in Marxism I had received through literature from the late Steven Ochieng’ Amoke a.k.a. Brigadier John Odongo. I therefore knew which side I belonged when I joined the University.
By May 1981, I was already in the bad books of the then Special Branch and was made to report twice a week to Special Branch office in Busia following the suspension of university programmes as a result of demonstrations protesting the mistreatment of doctors in public hospitals and barring the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and a Mr. Diffu from contesting parliamentary by-elections in Bondo and Busia South (now Budalang’i) respectively. Casualties included Odindo Opiata, Makau wa Mutua, Saulo Busolo, Anyona Kanundu and Misore George, among others.
A year later – and many events in between – Adongo Ogony, Onyango C.A., David Murathe and I were delivering a protest memorandum at the gates of State House Nairobi to oppose the bulldozing of this country into one-party dictatorship. This was the first indirect contact with Raila as we both supported the formation of Kenya Socialist Alliance, and our student caucus was represented by Adongo and Murathe.
On August 16, 1982, a contingent of armed police and Special Branch officers came for me at my rural village to take me on a journey that ended in my detention at the GSU Training School in Embakasi and later incarceration on a trumped-up charge of sedition. Incidentally, Raila was also arrested at the same time, detained at GSU Headquarters in Ruaraka, charged with treason and then later detained without trial. Fast forward to April 14, 1986 when once again I was whisked away from Kipsigis Girls High School where I taught straight to Nyayo House where I underwent 15 days of intensive torture before being thrown into jail for four years.
To cut a long story short, I have struggled for a good constitution the whole of my adult life. In that struggle, we have shared trenches with among others Willy Mutunga, Njeri Kabeberi, Ng’ang’a Thiong’o, Mwandawiro Mghanga, Micere Mugo, Maina wa Kinyatti, Odenda Lumumba, Shadrack Gutto, Tirop Kitur, Kishushe Mzirai, Zarina Patel and the late Jembe Mwakalu. These people do not come from the same village. That does not mean that I will run away from Raila, Edward Oyugi, Onyango Oloo or Adhu Awiti to join sons of colonial chiefs, former torturers (kimenderos) of Mau Mau militants and new reactionaries in order to be seen as a "nationalist."
As we struggled for a new, liberating constitution through the Coalition for National Convention (CNC), through 4Cs, NCEC, Ufungamano to Bomas Katiba Watch, my eyes have never wandered from the ultimate prize. Ethnicity has meant nothing to me in that struggle. In pursuit of a good constitution for Kenya, I will be a stooge of whoever is on the right side, Raila Odinga or the Kenyan worker.
***
Congrats KNCHR and KHRC. One question though. Are mpumbavu and mavi ya kuku part of savoury language?
* The writer is a development expert
Standard Commentary: Nov. 16, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Oduor Ongwen
I contemplated leading a delegation to President Kibaki to allocate the Kenyan side of Lake Victoria to my villagers and all the beaches therein to me as an aspiring community leader. However, good counsel prevailed and as a result I will remain poor. I instead want to abuse this space by engaging in self-praise. I do not subscribe to the English modesty of one not blowing one’s own trumpet. If you don’t blow your own trumpet, who would know you have a trumpet in the first place?
As a commentator, I have found it unfair to comment on the feedbacks I get from my readers since they are not equally advantaged with a guaranteed platform. The reaction by a reader to my account of and outrage at the horror of police brutality I witnessed first-hand in Kisumu on Saturday, October 29 has, however, made me elect to violate this self-imposed sanction. I was particularly incensed by the reader’s lack of human feelings for innocent lives lost and the trauma of the bereaved. He only saw a "Raila Stooge" in me.
I will focus on my personal experiences because I believe that the private and personal realm is where the community starts, and where the struggle begins. We are continually walking about with other activists, all of us talking about struggle and change, yet we rarely share our private thoughts, the personal reality that moves us beyond the ideals of the struggle, or change, or justice, to transformative action.
We are enjoined by a common cause, by the work and issues we share, and by the discourse that we have adopted to share on these issues. At the same time we are separated – by our private thoughts and experiences; by our personal dilemmas concerning life and the living of it; by the monologue that goes on in our head everyday; the conversation that no one hears but ourselves. It is imperative that we share the personal of the political – this monologue that we never get an opportunity to share in an environment of trust and solidarity.
My work has been privileged by the fact that I have been able to be a local activist at school, in the university, in prison, in my village, in the residential estate where I live, and nationally in Kenya, and at the same time, an international activist in the wider world. Locally, my work originally focused on student rights and general welfare, but quickly moved beyond this to focus on social inequalities, gender, race and class. This is also the focus of my international activism, which most recently has focused on global economic governance resulting in and reinforcing inequalities between and within nations. It has particularly centred on trade injustice, debt slavery and extraction and appropriation of primary commodities from Africa by transnational corporate interests.
My first serious contact with "real" activism at national level was in 1980 when as a pre-university chap (I was waiting to join the University in October that year) I joined a demonstration by university staff and students in honour of Walter Rodney. I then didn’t know who Rodney was, but speeches made rekindled in me rudimentary lessons in Marxism I had received through literature from the late Steven Ochieng’ Amoke a.k.a. Brigadier John Odongo. I therefore knew which side I belonged when I joined the University.
By May 1981, I was already in the bad books of the then Special Branch and was made to report twice a week to Special Branch office in Busia following the suspension of university programmes as a result of demonstrations protesting the mistreatment of doctors in public hospitals and barring the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and a Mr. Diffu from contesting parliamentary by-elections in Bondo and Busia South (now Budalang’i) respectively. Casualties included Odindo Opiata, Makau wa Mutua, Saulo Busolo, Anyona Kanundu and Misore George, among others.
A year later – and many events in between – Adongo Ogony, Onyango C.A., David Murathe and I were delivering a protest memorandum at the gates of State House Nairobi to oppose the bulldozing of this country into one-party dictatorship. This was the first indirect contact with Raila as we both supported the formation of Kenya Socialist Alliance, and our student caucus was represented by Adongo and Murathe.
On August 16, 1982, a contingent of armed police and Special Branch officers came for me at my rural village to take me on a journey that ended in my detention at the GSU Training School in Embakasi and later incarceration on a trumped-up charge of sedition. Incidentally, Raila was also arrested at the same time, detained at GSU Headquarters in Ruaraka, charged with treason and then later detained without trial. Fast forward to April 14, 1986 when once again I was whisked away from Kipsigis Girls High School where I taught straight to Nyayo House where I underwent 15 days of intensive torture before being thrown into jail for four years.
To cut a long story short, I have struggled for a good constitution the whole of my adult life. In that struggle, we have shared trenches with among others Willy Mutunga, Njeri Kabeberi, Ng’ang’a Thiong’o, Mwandawiro Mghanga, Micere Mugo, Maina wa Kinyatti, Odenda Lumumba, Shadrack Gutto, Tirop Kitur, Kishushe Mzirai, Zarina Patel and the late Jembe Mwakalu. These people do not come from the same village. That does not mean that I will run away from Raila, Edward Oyugi, Onyango Oloo or Adhu Awiti to join sons of colonial chiefs, former torturers (kimenderos) of Mau Mau militants and new reactionaries in order to be seen as a "nationalist."
As we struggled for a new, liberating constitution through the Coalition for National Convention (CNC), through 4Cs, NCEC, Ufungamano to Bomas Katiba Watch, my eyes have never wandered from the ultimate prize. Ethnicity has meant nothing to me in that struggle. In pursuit of a good constitution for Kenya, I will be a stooge of whoever is on the right side, Raila Odinga or the Kenyan worker.
***
Congrats KNCHR and KHRC. One question though. Are mpumbavu and mavi ya kuku part of savoury language?
* The writer is a development expert