Martin Shikuku, with microphone, James Orengo, with hands up and the late Masinde Muliro, as they tried to storm Kamukunji for a banned rally.

By Ochieng’ Maddo

In the run up to March 2013 general election, mainstream media conspired to cover the polls in a manner that gave advantage to Jubilee’s Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto. Even though the state owned Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) has always favoured the government of the day, this time round it supported Jubilee because a greater percentage of its employees including the Managing Director come from the president’s region.

The media stooped too low until it took the intervention of political analyst Barack Muluka, to bring them back to their senses in a hard hitting article in The Satandardon 17 November 2012: How Media is Failing Kenyans. Muluka castigated the media and and posed: ‘We scratch at the surface of things. We present them only for entertainment value. When did we lose it? Do we really understand the underlying rot?’

He reminded them of their role as the ‘fourth estate’, in the words of Edmund Burke, as opposed to their preoccupation with  irresponsible political utterances at press conferences, rallies and burials. After that the Media Council came up with some belated election agenda, which flopped miserably. Meanwhile, the mushroom FM radios as usual thrived on their idle talk in the morning.

My take is that this practice by Kenyan media is by design, not default. It began in early 2000 when Mwai Kibaki became president. Some sections of the media wanted to divert people’s attention from government’s failures. But right now it has grown full blast. Writing in The East African on 12 October 2013, activist Muthoni Wanyeki pointed out that the media was complicit with the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission in March, conspiring to only publish the IEBC’s “official” results. She notes that until today, IEBC sits pretty, not bothered by the fact that the Country still lacks correct tallies from that election, because its watchdog is compromised.

However, in scenarios where the local media abdicates its mandate for whatever reason, two entities—the international media and the civil society groups—play a crucial role of agitating for justice. But of late there has been a systematic onslaught on these two entities in Kenya, which if left to continue, will kill social justice completely. When IEBC chairman Isaac Hassan was releasing presidential results in March, he praised the local media for ‘patriotism’. Some Kenyan media faulted foreign media for ‘predicting chaos’ in the country. But I believe a bloodbath was inevitable had the local media highlighted the malpractices and shortcomings that characterised that particular poll.

This week Kenya commemorates 50 years of independence amid growing poverty, corruption, ignorance, disease and worse, her president and his deputy facing criminal charges at the International Criminal Court. However, both the media and Jubilee supporters have shown hostility towards civil society groups, whereby Human Rights activist Maina Kiai was threatened with death by people he claimed have ties with State House. The Standard newspaper also characteristically branded Kiai ‘ICC Activist’, putting his security at stake.

On 13 October 2013, Lawyer David Matsanga while hosted by NTV read from the same script and issued veiled claims that ICJ’s Stella Ndirangu and KHRC’s Prof Makau Mutua were being paid by NGOs in whose interest they were acting. Matsanga was echoing sentiments which have prevailed in the country since Mwai Kibaki became president. Many civil society activists (mostly from the grater Mount Kenya region and others affiliated to opposition parties which formed the coalition government) abandoned activism. So strong had their passion for justice been that even shortly after Narc took power, lawyer Kimotho Waiganjo could still manage to jump over parliament’s metallic grills to confront Assistant Minister George Khaniri over ‘parliamentary greed’. Not anymore. The passion is as dead as dodo and the people whose opinions are considered to go against the grain like Koigi wa Wamwere and Gitobu Imanyara are branded traitors. Gone are the days when defiant Weekly Review, Nairobi Law Monthly and other underground publications aired courageous views of the clergy, trade unionists, professionals, rights activists, NGOs and student leaders.

Attempts at fighting for the common people are now viewed as unnecessary gimmicks. During 2012 Madaraka Day, I was horrified to watch as viewers attacked activist Okoiti Omtatah on NTV’s The Trend. A viewer alleged that Omtatah was a gun for hire by the highest bidder, and that he pays chokoras to smear him with dirt so as to attract public sympathy. Another viewer insinuated that Omatatah was on someone’s pay roll to stage his bizarre-styled activism.

Omtatah however, preferred to be called ‘conscious citizen’, not activist. This implies—correctly—that there are other citizens who are less conscious of their rights. In all developed countries, almost every citizen would behave like Omtatah—or worse—were they in similar circumstances, and they would still be seen as quite sane people. In the United Kingdom, citizens protest against much smaller things than Kenya’s earth-shaking scandals, wanton corruption, brazen greed, tribalism and impunity. And their styles of protest are even more creative, dramatic and sophisticated; thanks to advanced technology. In fact, most protests and demonstrations are triggered by intended policy changes; not already executed crimes as is the case in Kenya.

Whereas we have just a handful of activist organisations in Kenya—which only erupt spontaneously and intermittently whenever there is a crisis—in the United Kingdom for example, there are hundreds of them, with chapters all over the world. Some of their reasons for activism would even be alien to many Kenyans. For instance, a pressure group called Friends of Environment is currently up in arms against the government’s multi million pounds plan to construct a third runway at Heathrow Airport. Economists say this will spur UK’s economic growth exponentially. But the activists fear it will degrade the environment. In Kenya, environmental conservation died with Nobel laureate Prof Wangare Maathai.

Agitation and activism are a requisite for citizen rights awareness. It boosts our knowledge of our own rights and privileges as enshrined in the constitution. It is a panacea to an organised society. We will not achieve vision 2030 by sitting there and lamenting over corruption, tribalism and bad leadership. We must stop the media and government from frustrating the civil society.