Growing up in British colonial Kitui in the 1950s I and my fellow primary school students would occasionally go to the African market still known as Kalundu.
Opposite the prison, Munyasya Nzamba stood on the road addressing people who were on their way to the market. I do not remember any people stopping to listen to what he said except us, the children.
We would stop and listen to him. We wondered whether he had a home. He was always clean and well-dressed. We were told he was the madman of the Kalundu Market.
We were also told that all markets in Kenya had their madmen, all people not to be taken seriously by anyone. As we listened to Nzamba he talked about issues that made sense to us as children.
We were his audience every week. I have been and continue to be intrigued by why the colonial administration in Kitui did not stop him from giving his lectures.
I guess the colonial administration thought that he was mad, mad enough to be speaking across from the Kitui colonial prison.
The Hyena and the Stone
The story is told of a hyena who was haranguing a stone. The hyena said all it wanted to say as persuasively as possible while also speaking truth to power, the stone.
When the hyena was done its parting shot was this: Even if you did not answer you have heard me. And I will not stop haranguing you, going forward.
The Croaking of Frogs do not Stop Animals from Drinking Water
This was President Jomo Kenyatta’s metaphor when he was asked to see the leftist academics at the University of Nairobi as a danger to “national security.”
As the University Staff Union continued to make political demands in Kenya Kenyatta was persuaded that Ngugi wa Thiong’o should be detained.
Ngugi joined other Kenyans who had opposed the Kenyatta-Kanu dictatorship. Eventually, the detainees were released and continued their struggles against the dictatorship.
The moral of these three stories for our government is that ultimately you will hear us.
The government can keep quiet, and call us mad women/men in the market or noisy frogs, but we shall not be silenced. We shall not cease to speak truth to power.
Yesterday it was Haiti. Today is Palestine
I have written in this column about the constitutionality of our foreign policy.
I have argued that our foreign policy cannot subvert and overthrow our Constitution by taking decisions that impact our national interest without our participation.
I have argued, quoting the relevant constitutional provisions, why our sovereignty as a people is anchored under our right to participate as Kenyans in all societal affairs, including how the government rules and governs.
Our government must know that it rules through our delegated sovereign power which we have the power to withdraw. That is the reason Public Interest Litigation in our courts has become such an important tool in guaranteeing that our sovereign power is not subverted.
We, the Kenyan People, have become, under our progressive constitution, custodians of our national interest. We must collectively guard our national sovereignty and interest from a ruling comprador class that plays an agency role in imperialism.
The President has decided in our “national interest” that Kenya has to join others in supporting Israel’s attacks on Palestinians.
Who did he consult? Why take a dictatorial decision that has political repercussions for us in Africa and Global Africa? Should Parliament, however unreliable and complicit in presidential authoritarianism, have been consulted?
Were the county governors and county representatives consulted? Does the President regard all these institutions as useless under the Constitution? We adopted, enacted, and gave unto ourselves and to our future generations the 2010 Constitution.
We also prayed to God to bless Kenya. The President, if I remember well, held both the Bible and the Constitution as he was sworn in office in September last year.
How can a God-fearing President subvert both the Bible and the Constitution while uttering the words “So, help me God?” Does the Oath of Office mean nothing to our President?
So, constitutionally and theologically the President has to let us be the custodians of our national interest; and understand that our sovereign power which he exercises in a delegated capacity trumps his presidential power.
Indeed, the Constitution makes the President a rubber stamp of what Kenyans decree to be in their national interest.
I Cry for Palestine
The parallels between Palestine and colonial and neocolonial Kenya are worth our engagement.
The Land and Freedom Army, also called the Mau Mau was not called so without a reason.
British colonialism and imperialism not only stole our land and resources but denied us our freedoms and our human dignity.
Colonial apartheid/racism was part of our daily experience. Which human beings will not resist when their land, and resources are stolen and their freedom as human beings negated?
Is that not a just war of resistance? Is that not a war of freedom? Palestine is occupied, colonized, imprisoned, dominated, and oppressed by the Zionist regime in Israel.
I hasten to add that Kenyans must make the distinction between the Zionists and the Jews.
Kenyans should know that there are Jews who refuse the Zionists speaking in their name.
We must historicize, interrogate, and problematize the Palestinian question as Kenyan people and not simply follow a government which in our eyes is caving in to imperialist interests for thirty pieces of silver.
Let us Stand with Palestine
I cry for Palestine. I cry for the children who are being killed daily. I cry against the tortures that the Palestinians face daily being prisoners in their land.
As a Kenyan who went through such inhuman fires under British colonialism and imperialism, I must internalize the pain, the quest for land and freedom, by the Palestinian people.
I will vote for our solidarity with Palestine if there is the participation of the Kenyan people in the Palestinian Question.
I believe given our own history those of us who are members of Kenya Palestine Solidarity Movement must continue to resist our foreign policy being implemented in a dictatorial, opaque, and non-accountable manner by our government.
The writer is the Former Chief Justice
