By TEE NGUGI

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Last week, a local TV station reported that three boys from Laikipia drowned while rushing to witness the spectacle of a high-ranking Kenyan politician and his chopper making a visit to their area.

To lose three young lives in whatever manner is a tragedy. To lose them as they attempt to gawk at a politician and his display of ostentatious wealth is an unspeakable tragedy.

Gawking at these wealthy beings as they are disgorged from machines that, for one hour of flight, charge enough money to feed a village for a week has become our national pastime.

I say national pastime because, while the incident reported above may look like a freak accident, there has been a deliberate and systematic effort by the political class to reduce Kenyans to cheerleaders and obsequious spectators to the drama of obscene wealth.

The effort has been successful. The spectacle of poverty-stricken villagers gawking in awe at political dignitaries landing in choppers or disembarking from gigantic SUVs has become a permanent feature of our interaction with the political class.

This servile culture, and its elevation of politicians to demigods, has been nurtured through the classroom, the media, the church, and the self-promotion of politicians.

A few months ago, an English Grade Two book, developed for the New Curriculum, whose stated goal is to make a child “an engaged, empowered and ethical citizen”, was withdrawn amid much uproar and anger. The book taught children that owning a helicopter, big cars and huge diamond rings were hallmarks of success.

Not empathy, not service, not invention or discovery. The book promoted the politician as the model citizen. Not a doctor, nurse or teacher. The book taught children the language of sycophancy. Not the language of critical engagement or appraisal.

Thus in the text, pupils, on seeing a helicopter about to land, cry reverentially, “Our leader, our leader.”

This indoctrination is in a Grade Two book, but it is also perpetuated by the media. What message do we pass on when each day TV stations run biographical profiles of politicians, but never of great academics or doctors?

While interviewing a politician, journalists behave as if they are in front of an oracle - “mheshimiwa this, honourable that’ – even when the man/woman being interviewed has been charged in court with incitement or graft, even when he or she is alleged to have taken bribes to shoot down a motion in parliament!

Grovelling journalists and churches

Even seasoned journalists are not immune to grovelling and sycophancy. I recently watched a series of interviews of a Moi-era functionary. The journalist just surrendered the microphone to his subject and reduced himself to a servile audience. So as the functionary recalled how he would be mesmerised by a dictator’s displays of megalomania, the journalist sat there mutely, just intervening occasionally to cheer on his interviewee.

The era covered by the functionary is one of the darkest in Kenya’s history. This was when the secret ballot was abolished, when Kenya became a de jure one-party state, when secret police lurked in lecture halls and in villages and townships, when suspicion of dissent landed one in detention after systematic torture, when hundreds fled into exile, when the government instigated ethnic violence, when hundreds were killed demonstrating for justice and democracy, when corruption was on an epic scale.

Not once did the journalist ask about these issues, let alone bring them up so that there was a balance of perspectives on that period. He had abdicated his duty to mediate, to filter out useless banter, and counterbalance self-congratulation with fact and logic.

By the end of the series of interviews, the functionary had remade a dark period in Kenya’s history into a happy, fanciful tale of good versus evil, good being the powers that were, and evil being those who were dissatisfied with the status quo.

There is also the case of another journalist who invites politicians to his show and aids and abets them in revising history or in interpreting our reality through ethnic or narcissistic lenses. Thus a key architect of the old constitution could come on the show and be allowed to praise his handwork without the slightest pushback from the journalist.

The church too is not exempt from this grovelling, and helping politicians perpetuate false narratives of themselves or of the nation. For forty pieces of silver, they will let politicians launder themselves.

Then, wearing pious masks, they will proceed to bless the politician while proclaiming the dangerous and false revelation that leadership, as represented by the politician, comes from God.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator.