By TEE NGUGI

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Remember the days when an African president was omnipresent?

In Kenya, we landed at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, drove down Kenyatta Avenue or Mama Ngina Street, held meetings at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, and sent our children to Kenyatta University. There were beaches, hospitals and schools named after Jomo Kenyatta or his wife.

And then, of course, Kenyatta stared benevolently at us from the currency. News items on the president led the evening news. Zaire was more innovative. As introduction to the news, mostly about Mobutu, his likeness would appear floating in white clouds.

There were monuments and statues in honour of Kenyatta. And which dictator worth his salt did not have a national day named after him? So we had Kenyatta Day. The absolute monarch Louis XIV declared infamously “L'etat c'est moi” ( I am the state ). In Kenya, we went a step further. We were not a country that had a president; we had a president who had a country.

When Daniel Arap Moi took over in 1978, he, like Kenyatta, began appropriating the country for himself. We got Moi International Airport and Moi University. There were stadia, hospitals, bridges and schools named after Moi.

His picture, like Kenyatta’s, stared out at you from every private or public office, and from the currency. Later, it would be considered your patriotic duty to wear a badge bearing the likeness of Moi on your lapel. Moi then had a monument built in his honour in Uhuru Park.

Earlier, there had been plans to build a 60-storey tower in Uhuru Park with a huge statue of Moi. Only a public campaign led by Wangari Maathai stopped this odious monument to megalomania. And finally, Moi had to have his day – Moi Day.

Deification

Ali Mazrui, in an article titled "The Monarchial Tendency in African Political Culture", called this process of turning a population into fervent celebrants of an individual “deification”. The president, Mazrui, argued, became a demigod, and state functions took on something of the nature of religious rites.

Kwame Nkrumah even took a Christ-like moniker – “The Redeemer.” Kenyatta was often praised in terms that recollected the Biblical Moses. And Peter Oloo-Aringo, who raised sycophancy to an art form, once referred to Moi as “The Prince of Peace”.

African presidents had become latter-day pharaohs worshipped by their hapless citizens. Mazrui would note: “Ancient kings and modern presidents are forced to share royal characteristics.”

The Constitution of Kenya 2010 was an act of re-appropriating the country from the president, and resituating the office of president within a constitutional framework. In other words, making mortal again the occupants of that office.

Accordingly, it established that sovereignty belongs to the people and is not vested, as previously, in the person of the president. Pictures of Kenya’s heritage sites replaced the face of the president on the currency.

Kenyatta Day became Mashujaa Day, celebrating all people who contributed and continue to contribute to nation building. Moi Day was no longer recognised as a national day. Importantly, the list of those commemorated by plaques and statues expanded to include people other than presidents.

Tom Mboya had a commemorative statue erected. Dedan Kimathi too had a statue erected in his honour. This process should continue in order to honour doctors, writers and sportspeople. In the West, the most visited sites by tourists are those that honour their poets, writers and freedom fighters.

So it is a step backwards to bring back a national day named after a president. The Constitution of Kenya gives parliament the sole authority to enact national days. From this standpoint, Moi Day offends the spirit of the Constitution. It is also questionable whether courts have jurisdiction to order reinstatement of a national day, for that is the sole preserve of parliament. Public participation in the process is also crucial.

National days should be days that commemorate the best of ourselves. Days, for instance, that gave us back dignity and freedom. From this perspective, the day that qualifies as a national day even, in my view, more than Jamhuri Day is the day we promulgated the new Constitution.

August 10 should be enacted into a national day and commemorated as Constitution Day. Bringing back Moi Day or Kenyatta Day is to denigrate the tears and blood that went into bringing the new Constitution into existence.

Tee Ngugi is a social and political commentator based in Nairobi. E-mail: [email protected]