Rhetoric: What Githu Muigai, Omar Hassan can learn from JM Kariuki

In Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s introduction to JM Kariuki’s classic ‘Mau Mau’ Detainee, he comments admiringly on the writer’s style: “The triumphant ring of hope rising above the sober and restrained tone.”

He goes on to describe Kariuki’s “narrative technique — the matter-of-fact tone, the deadpan humour, the piling up of details without over-dramatic decoration.”
All of this was part of Kariuki’s strategy of persuasion. Writing just before Kenyan Independence, Kariuki was aiming at global sympathy for the justness of his cause.

Simple equation: To convince doubters, be measured, use evidence, restrain your passions.
These days, there are few rhetorical engineers with the ability to apply this formula faithfully.

Consider Kenyan Attorney General Githu Muigai’s initial response to provocations from the Constitutional Implementation Commission.

In a fit of pique after he was accused of obstructionism, the AG questioned the CIC’s interpretation of the meaning of “consultation” with regard to new legislation.
“What does consultation mean? We get the draft from the parent ministry, do the drafting, we share the draft with the CIC and tell them to quickly give their comments on it, and send the law back to us. If they make comments that we find inappropriate we will not agree with them,” Prof Muigai said.

The AG may have had cause to be offended by the head of the CIC. That is not the issue. Kariuki, detained and tortured over seven years in British concentration camps, would have equally been within his rights to have been, in Ngugi’s words, “over-dramatic.”

The issue is precisely how public officers conduct themselves when they feel offended or threatened by others. The AG opted to use incendiary language, and in so doing, to lay bare his neolithic conception of consultation.

Why, after all, should the CIC “quickly” give their comments? And does consultation really mean listening only to that part of what another says that we already agree with?
This understanding of one of the key principles of the new Constitution is worrying.

More than that, it reveals an inability to reflect upon the type of democratic rhetoric officials must utilise to persuade citizens that they are working in the public interest.

This brings me to the debate over Hassan Omar Hassan’s recent article, “What do Kibaki men know or what are they planning?”

For those not following the row, Omar, former commissioner of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, has been accused of “hate speech” for his various claims in the article related to the role of the Kikuyu in Kenyan politics — published when he was still at KNCHR, hence still a public servant. The retort from supporters has been that what he says about Kikuyu dominance under Kibaki are simply “the facts.”

These extreme reactions have elided what seems to me to be the core issue: Did Hassan Omar use rhetoric in a democratic and persuasive fashion befitting a public servant?

There is no question that Omar raises valid points when he, relying on others’ data, suggests that Kikuyus are preponderant in public service (though he ignores Kalenjin overrepresentation). As a non-Kikuyu, nay, as a responsible Kenyan, he is entitled to be offended by this. The question is whether he has followed the Kariuki formula in stating his case.

What was Hassan Omar trying to accomplish? Omar’s piece is actually not about Kibaki’s ethnicisation of politics.

He only borrows this fact in service of another, highly speculative argument: The Kikuyus are going to lose the presidency in 2012.