Thika road blockade: It's not Kenyans who are disobedient, it's the state

Like other colonial states, the Kenyan version is wont to blame its victims for the pain it visits on them.

When its officials rob and steal from Kenyans, it says that the fault lies with us because corruption is a “cultural problem” that is endemic in Kenyan society.

When it repeatedly fails in its duty to prevent terrorist attacks, we are told that it is because security begins with us.

And when it fails to plan for a pandemic, to do the work of engaging with the people to understand and ameliorate the effects of its directives and then brutalises Kenyans in the name of enforcing its dictates, it predictably turns around and blames us for our supposed propensity to disobey laws.

The latter was on full display last weekend when the police, without notice, blocked roads on two consecutive days under the guise of enforcing the curfew.

This caused massive, hours-long tailbacks that trapped ambulances and other emergency vehicles as well as Kenyans in all sorts of distressing circumstances – from parents trying to get their kids home to people taking their remains of loved ones to the city mortuary.

It was an atrociously inhumane thing to do and echoed the extreme brutality meted out to Kenyans at the Coast a year earlier under a similar pretext.

Instead of acknowledging its error, the government attempted to argue that it was essentially forced into acting abhorrently by the stubbornness of Kenyans.

It was reminiscent of the words of the anonymous American major in Vietnam describing the fighting at Ben Tre who declared: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it”.

For the government was essentially saying that it had become necessary to brutalise Kenyans to save them from themselves.

There are several problems with this thinking. First, it conflates the people’s actions with those of the state.

And worse, it suggests that there are times when people can forfeit their right to be treated like, or even considered to be, human beings by the very state they pay for.

The two points are linked. Our Constitution recognises that regardless of how people act, the state is still bound to respond in a lawful manner that respects and upholds their dignity and humanity.

It should not see people as a site to vent its frustrations. They are always human beings who should be accorded rights and dignity even when responding to their alleged wrongdoing.

This is a point that seemed to elude many on social media who were backing the government’s action and declaring the law – meaning the curfew – must be enforced. But the immediate problem was not with whether it should be. It was with how it was actually enforced.

There are deeper issues that should be followed up, including the advisability of using unilateral decrees issued from the State House ivory tower to battle the pandemic rather than consulting with communities; the advisability of treating pandemics as a law-and-order issue and having policemen rather than community health workers and medics as the face of the government response; and whether Kenya is a dictatorship where the Constitution permits the President to indefinitely impose a curfew and restrict rights without even needing to seek the approval of Parliament.

But the immediate one was the police response. There can never be a justification for the state treating a Kenyan resident with anything less than the full respect demanded by the Constitution.

This is regardless of what he or she or they have done. It was one of the tenets of colonialism that the humanity of the people it subjugated could be questioned, that they could always fall short. Accepting this was what the oppressors demanded of the oppressed. To date it is what the government of Kenya demands.

Yet that must be resisted. We do not exist to obey the government. It exists to serve us. And to do it in the manner we prescribe in the Constitution.

It is not Kenyans who are disobedient. It is the state itself. All conversations about curfew enforcement should begin there.