Kenya's people too have promulgated their resolve

The new Constitution was officially promulgated last week, finally ushering in the Second Republic. Nairobi was cleaned up, roads were closed and tight security was maintained given all the VIPs coming in — among them the African Union’s Panel of Eminent Personalities, and heads of state from around the region.

Sadly but not surprisingly, those Kenyans whose life’s work has been devoted to a new Constitutional dispensation, did not feature at the official promulgation ceremony.

Knowing that their exclusion from the official making of history would occur (as it always does), Kenya’s human-rights community organised what it called the “people’s promulgation” — a one-day event that took place, fittingly, at the National Museums of Kenya — making the point that history, correctly written, will eventually record not just those in officialdom who always credit themselves for history when it’s made, but also the intellectual and other leadership of the constituencies actually responsible for that history.

The “people’s promulgation” was organised to honour and pay tribute to those who had played leadership roles in the long struggle for a new Constitution from the pre-Independence period on. No less than five decades of struggle were represented.

Along the way, many, many, many ordinary citizens lent their voices to these initiatives — with some paying with their lives.

The leadership of the struggle suffered expulsions from universities, detentions without trial, torture, while their families suffered loss of livelihoods, alienation and stigma.

It is not surprising that several of those who spoke called on our academics, artists and writers to take on the job of re-writing our history to accurately reflect the individuals and organisations behind this change.

But many of those who spoke talked too about the need for continued political organisation to support the implementation of the new Constitution. Reverend Timothy Njoya spoke of the need for a “Commission of Implementation Alertness” (CIA!)

Alertness will be important to ensure that the all-too-familiar pattern of breakdown and re-alignments of the current elite consensus does not emerge once again.

Continuing political education will be important, so that citizens not only know the roles they are expected to play in implementation but also begin to prepare for all the new opportunities for participation in public life, including political representation at all levels of government.

Nurturing that new leadership will be critical to ensure that the general election of 2012 really marks a break from the neo-feudal patterns of political leadership we see today.

We didn’t, as the National Constitutional Assembly and National Constitutional Executive Council had hoped in the 1990s, achieve both constitutional and regime change simultaneously.

But the constitutional change we have now gives us two years to prepare for regime change — and an end to the kind of thuggery it currently takes to get into office and stay there.

Achieving the new Kenya will require Kenyans of all backgrounds and capacities and generations to work both inside and outside of the state — maintaining accountability to each other. We know too well the potential for everything to get hijacked.

Pheroze Nowrojee reminded us that, at Independence, “Those who fought for freedom did not take power... and those who took power had not fought for freedom” — we cannot let that happen again.