I love Reggae music. The conservative ‘Roots’ variety. There is a consciousness and purity to this genre – what we call “Livity” in Rastafarianism – that is hard to come by in the other forms of music. Due to my dream to be a junior clan elder in the near future, as well as the strict Anglican church upbringing, I am rarely found in the pubs, except on Reggae nights. There is nothing quite like an evening spent rocking to heavy-duty Reggae music blasting from giant speakers.
Several years ago, there were hardly any safe places in the country where a Reggae lover could retreat to partake of the entertainment. For some reason, since the genre is widely acknowledged as protest and liberation music, it has always been a magnet for the rougher members of society. Needless to say, up until recent times, clubs offering it on the entertainment menu would mostly be located in places where revellers were likely to return home without their wallets and other personal effects.
That was until early 2000s, when a revolution, led largely by the DJ unit called Dohty Family, owned by one DJ Kriss Darling, brought Reggae music ‘uptown’, starting in Parklands, before spreading like wildfire to more ‘friendly parts of the city’. Things were moving along nicely, until Covid-19 came, disrupting businesses and livelihoods.
By the time the pandemic had given humanity a break, my beloved Reggae calendar, from Monday to Sunday of each week, was basically gone. Well, to be fair, there were signs of recovery on this front lately, but for some reason, it happens that at the three least favourite Reggae joints in the city have recently been demolished, apparently over land disputes. And I am back where I started: the good times and places are gone!
I was reflecting on this decline of ‘goodness’ recently, when I wondered; are all the good things in this country firmly in the past? Be it the economy, politics, industry and the general ‘feel good factor of the people, what really is working well today? It seems, from where I sit, that the hope in governance, in prosperity and in progress in national institutions and the collective psyche has ebbed away, quite gradually.
I grew up in the sugar belt. At its peak in the’80s, there were at least five sugar factories crushing cane at full capacity. They were employers of hundreds of thousands of residents of Western and Nyanza regions. I am certain nearly every homestead around the West of the country had some sort of relationship with these sugar mills, be it via employment or as what they called cane out growers.
Through bad economic policies, importation of cheap sugar and plain old corruption, the beautiful sugar belt days died. In place of most of these factories are rotting old mills, surrounded by towns and trading centres that relied solely on the machines for sustenance. It is despondency at a horrible scale, with many residents who previously had the means to educate their children and feed their families now lining up at Constituency Development Fund offices seeking bursaries and cash handouts.
Over the years, each regime has used the predicament of the sugar belt, which hosts a sizeable number of voters, to play politics. Rallies have been called where grand plans to resurrect the collapsed industries have been announced. Soon after, the stories die down as the political caravan moves to the next gullible place to sell air. There are greater systemic, economic and structural issues around collapsed industries, so political rallies do not quite measure up as the venues to prosecute such heavy matters.
In the ideal world, you would assume that with difficult times hovering over the population like a curse, sports would offer an avenue to release a little tension. Football used to be the favourite sport in this nation. I am not sure it still is. Because many disillusioned fans have turned their backs on a sport bedevilled by poor management, infighting and corruption. I actually smile in bemusement when politicians angling for elective positions make grandiose promises about sending the country to global or continental tournaments. There is nothing to suggest we could ever come close.
Tragically, the rot doesn’t end with football. No matter what major sport you pick, all the good times are in history. Cricket, volleyball, rugby and perhaps even our speciality, athletics. I, for one, was quite sad when Kenya’s Sevens rugby team, Shujaa, was relegated from the core of the IRB sevens circuit, a season ago. As far as global beaters are concerned, this seemed to be the one Kenyan team with the pedigree, belief and electric pace to consistently function at the top. It’s all now in the past.
You couldn’t close this topic without taking a quick peak into our politics. Parliament used to be the vanguard of democracy. Even under the one-party rule, we would be sure to find firebrands who kept the government on its toes. Today, casual conversations about the most principled parliamentary debaters almost always point only to the past.
Today, the ruling coalition has created a set of voting robots in both houses, who will not question the impact of the bills and motions on the lives of their electorate. Nothing demonstrates this more than recent revelations by politicians from the Mount Kenya region alluding to their belated realisation that the Finance Act 2023, which they enthusiastically passed in a dramatic manner, contained policies that now hurt their people.
I could go on and on, but I am persuaded that the nation’s best moments remain in the past because the culture of tribally divisive politics bestowed on our regressive leadership at each election cycle. I have a politician friend who avers that the country risks sinking into a hole so deep that we may never retrieve it, if progressive leadership doesn’t take power soon. In his view, the sustenance of impunity, bad governance and nonchalance over the suffering of citizens, constitute an existential threat to the national fabric that has to be arrested when there is still a window to do so.
I’ll close with what I consider the lowest of the depths to which we have sunk. In the past few weeks, we have witnessed power blackouts happening at two different presidential functions, while the President was actually on the podium speaking. It is totally unprecedented. In fact, my first reaction on seeing both clips was “where is the National Intelligence Service?”
The intelligence service of a country is paid to do all sorts of things, including predicting rains and gauging the moods of mundane roadside bystanders. As long as it may constitute a national security issue, it falls within their ambit This is the kind of background where you expect the spies to have a heads-up on presidential functions, power supply to the venues, crowd control and the works. It is beyond imagination that heckling can happen, repeatedly, at different presidential functions, followed by blackouts at others, without the intelligence folks having an inkling in advance. There was a time, even under the much-maligned Moi administration, you were sure the security apparatus was on top of its game and could smell trouble from a mile. Not anymore. Perhaps, it’s time to accept that everything we held dear now lies cold in a graveyard of nostalgia, firmly in the past.
Political commentator
