Let me confess that I am a cynic when it comes to matters of state power and its use. As a witness of countless violations of social, economic and basic human rights of citizens over many years, nationalist politics for me lost its ballast. While every leader claims fidelity to the rule of law and the will of citizens, the locus of state power seems to reside elsewhere.
One would have thought that state power would be located in the laws, representation in the national and local parliaments but also through oversight by those to whom we citizens delegate our power to. Increasingly, at least in the case of Kenya where my experience is upbeat, without connections, inducements, money and political ties one cannot experience the state.
I choose to be decidedly critical of the state, corporate control of state structures and the increasing narrowing range of public discourse. The humor with which ordinary citizens bear and confront the numerous violations that state places in the way of their humanist aspirations moves me to write this Blog series.
Victims of state repression are angry, in communities of density where evictions take place daily, in wet sellers markets where local authorities harass traders, amongst the youth who bear the brunt of police excesses, for natural resource dependent communities where investors appropriate indigenous resources among others, anger is building and that anger, when fully justified by the unjust acts of others, should be harnessed to oppose injustice.
I believe it’s the duty of good citizens to actively promote and curate such citizen anger with a view to ensuring the anger does not degenerate into uncontrolled destructive revengefulness which is what countries such as Kenya is courting.
