> Walu
>
> Is inane chatter not an abuse? Or are there some who are
> allowed to abuse the people on this mailing list?
>
> What do people gain in defending the corrupt? Why do we
> fear to hear the people who are incorrigibly corrupt being
> rebuked?
>
> JM
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: P Gitau Githongo <
pgitau@githongo.com>
> To:
j.maina@ymail.com> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
> <
kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>
> Sent: Monday, December 8, 2008 3:14:06 PM
> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Vitriol in cyberspace
>
>
> Alice,
>
> Might I suggest that you add a guiding principle to the
> mailing list rules,
> along the lines of..
>
> 'Contributors should seek to improve or benefit the
> understanding and
> knowledge of others as well as their own.'
>
> You could then urge contributors to gauge their own
> statements according to
> such a principle before forwarding to the group.
>
> Hopefully that way, the rest of us seeking to practice the
> above principle
> are not
subject to the kind of deluge of inane chatter seen
> last week.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:
> kictanet-bounces+pgitau=
githongo.com@
lists.kictanet.or.ke
> [mailto:
kictanet-bounces+pgitau=
githongo.com@
lists.kictanet.or.ke]
> On Behalf
> Of
alice@apc.org> Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 8:45 AM
> To:
pgitau@githongo.com> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
> Subject: [kictanet] Vitriol in cyberspace
>
> Dear All,
>
> Could we comment on the presentation that Brian (a Kenyan)
> made at the IGF
> currently taking place in Hyderabad. It was an excellent
> presentation on
> access befitting the theme of the forum: "Internet for
> all" and he has
> done us proud.
>
> It is also great to have quite a large Kenyan delegation at
> this India IGF
> contributing Kenyan specific IG issues. The IGF is a
> process/event/forum
> that had not received enough attention both at the
> national and regional
> level.
>
---------
>
> I will also take this opportunity to remind listers of some
> of the
> KICTAnet mailing list rules:
>
> * Please mind your manners:
> * Be polite - virtual members are real not a
> cyberspace borg with no
> feelings.
> * Watch your words. Kick the bad language - People are
> listening.
> * Laws are laws - What's real in the real world
> are the same in
> cyberspace.
> * Don't send rude or offensive e-mails or
> postings.
> * Be ethical in your posting. Don't lie,
> plagiarize, defame, or
> deliberately do harm to another KICTANet forum user.
>
>
> If you are not able to respect these simple rules...the
> KICTANet
> administrator will have no choice but to suspend
you!
>
> best
> alice
>
>
>
>
> Binaifer Nowrojee wrote:
> >
> > For those who have not read this opinion piece, I
> would urge you to do
> so and reflect on it. Why do we need to bring down Brian
> Longwe on the
> basis of his nationality? Why not celebrate his success?
> Why assume
> that a non-Kenyan will not positively contribute to Kenya?
> >
> > Best
> >
> > Binaifer Nowrojee
> >
> >
> >
> > Barack Obama and the graveyard of hope
> >
> > Wambui Mwangi (2008-08-11)
> >
> >
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/50078
> >
> >
Printer friendly version
> >
> > There are 2 comments on this article.
> >
> > I am finding it very difficult to join in the
> jubilation about Senator
> Barack Obama. Not that I want to deny the man his victory,
> but my
> impulse to celebrate keeps deflating on the idea that the
> best thing
> that happened to little Barack was not growing up in Kenya.
> >
> > I have been imagining alternative trajectories for him
> if he had come to
> know the world through the eyes of a Kenyan citizen, if his
> mother and
> grandparents had not rescued him from our chaos and
> contradictions and
> brought him up somewhere his intellect and talent could
> grow.
> >
> > If he had grown up here, and had he somehow managed to
> retain most
> elements of his current self, he would have been another
>
outstanding,
> intelligent and competent Luo man in our midst: and he
> would have been
> killed.
> >
> > Yes, we would have assassinated a Barack Obama if he
> had remained ours,
> with us, one of us here in this schizophrenic cauldron we
> call home.
> This is not going to stretch the imagination of any Kenyan
> - after all,
> when we had that incredibly good-looking and charismatic
> home-grown
> hero, Tom Mboya, we shot him to death..
> >
> > And when that austerely intellectual and elegant
> leader, Robert Ouko,
> threatened to look overly intelligent to the world, we
> killed him too.
> We killed Pio Gama Pinto and we killed JM Kariuki. There is
> no reason to
> suppose that Barack Obama, whose integrity of purpose and
> stringent
> sense of ethics even his enemies concede, would have
> survived
his Kenyan
> roots.
> >
> > He is much too intelligent, too charged with the
> promise of history, too
> bold in his claim to a shining destiny, too full of the
> audacity of
> hope, for us to have let him survive. Kenya would have
> killed Barack
> Obama, or at least his dream, as we inevitably destroy, in
> one way or
> another, the best and the boldest of us. Goldenberg whistle
> blower David
> Munyakei's challenge to his country to be bigger than
> our greed was met
> with a whimper, and then with rapid abandonment. We did not
> deserve him,
> either.
> >
> > As for John Githongo, he should have known better than
> to take the idea
> of public ethics seriously - this is Kenya, after all. Let
> him enlighten
> people at Oxford instead; such considerations are too
> virtuous for us,
> too
sensible, too conducive to a promising future. We do
> not even remark
> on the haunting wastage of all this shining accomplishment
> - Micere Mugo
> sings her lyrical poetry for Americans, and we do not even
> know enough
> to mourn the loss.
> >
> > And yet we are all enchanted with the power of the
> idea of Barack Obama,
> the hope of him, the beauty of his life's trajectory,
> the universe of
> possibilities and probabilities that it conjures for the
> least of the
> rest of us. If someone's cousin's friend's
> neighbour makes it to the
> United States... then we all have a chance. We have a
> strange
> predilection for schizophrenic loves and loyalties; we let
> geography
> dictate our alliances and imaginary lines decide our
> friends. It is as
> if our social contract states that here, at home, we are
>
obliged to
> behave like fighting rats to each other but when abroad,
> when released
> from the shackles of kin and clan and conclave, we can fly
> and soar and
> master the sky.
> >
> > When Wangari Maathai is abroad, we feel that her Nobel
> Prize is partly
> represented in each of our Kenyan living rooms; when she
> comes home, she
> is just another Kikuyu politico. We preen about our
> athletes winning yet
> another international competition to anybody who will give
> us half a
> chance, but when they are at home we turn them into more
> fodder for
> militias.
> >
> > Caine Prize winners are Kenyan by automatic assent,
> but Binyavanga
> Wainaina is a Kikuyu writer when at home and Yvonne Owuor
> is indelibly a
> Luo - we shrink them to fit the midget-sized visions we
> have of
>
ourselves.
> >
> > It is clear to all of us, and the evidence continues
> to accrue, that we
> have, collectively, a certain global competence, as
> Kenyans, that we
> produce individuals of substance and historical purpose.
> >
> > Being Kenyan, however, we prefer to drown in the
> pettiness of our
> parochial quarrels when at home, and if one of us threatens
> to be too
> hopeful, too ambitious, too intelligent, too creative or
> too
> inspirational to fit into our trivial little categories of
> hatred and
> suspicion, we kill them, or exile them from our societies,
> or we just
> cause them to run away inside, hiding from us and from
> themselves the
> grandeur of their souls, the splendid landscapes of their
> imagined
> tomorrows.
> >
> > Nothing but the worst for us, at home. We
recognise
> each other by our
> most rancid rhetoric. We insist upon it, we cultivate it,
> we elevate it
> to an art form: Kenyan, and quarrelsome.
> >
> > Kenyan, and clannish. Kenyan, and counter-productive.
> Kenyan, and
> self-destructive. Kenyan, and consistently heart-breaking.
> Genius
> everywhere, and not a thought to be had. Promise and
> potential
> everywhere, and not an opportunity to be had. Money
> everywhere, and not
> an honest penny to be earned. Helicopters aplenty, but no
> help for the
> needy. A land awash in Cabinet ministers and poverty.
> >
> > I have been watching Kenyans getting high on
> Obamamania, and I am
> wondering what we are so happy about? It is perhaps that we
> are
> beginning to acknowledge what we should always have known -
> given a half
> a chance, an ever
so slightly conducive context, Kenyans
> are more likely
> to over-achieve than not. At the faintest provocation,
> Kenyans will leap
> past expectations without breaking their stride or breaking
> a sweat,
> especially if they happen to have escaped the imprisoning
> edifice we
> call home and found foreign contexts to flourish in, no
> matter how
> alien.
> >
> > I went to a town in the Canadian Arctic once, in the
> far north, where in
> summer the sun shines even at midnight and in the winter
> the world is an
> endless landscape of ice and snow. Here, far, far away from
> home, where
> nothing was familiar except the gentleness of elderly Inuit
> women and
> the comforting weirdness of the white residents, I was told
> that the
> local dentist had, for many years, been a Kenyan. Everybody
> said he
had
> been an excellent dentist, out there in the desert of the
> cold. I was
> unsurprised.
> >
> > We are an adventurous people, we Kenyans, and we take
> to the world
> outside our home as if born to a conquistador culture - we
> are brave and
> brash and bold, out there. We buy and sell things, and make
> money at it,
> out there. We go to school and excel and cover ourselves
> with
> accreditations, out there. We win things, out there. We get
> prizes, out
> there. We are at our best, out there.
> >
> > However, at home, for some reason we refuse to either
> acknowledge or
> examine - we have chosen simply to set aside this capacity.
> Here, at
> home, nothing but the very lowest common denominator will
> do; nothing
> but the basest and most brutal aspects of our selves are to
> be
presented
> to each other; nothing but the most cynical manipulation is
> the basis of
> our political space. We prefer to be ruled by individuals
> whose
> mediocrity is matched only by their mendacity, here at
> home.
> >
> > We prefer to abdicate our adult responsibilities and
> capacity for reason
> to "leaders" whose lack of virtue is as legendary
> as our attractively
> exotic pastoralists. We do not only waste talent, here at
> home - we go
> out of our way to suppress and repress it. We do not only
> deny dreams,
> here in Kenya - we devour them, and ask each other,
> "Who do you think
> you are?" As if the success of another is an affront.
> >
> > In Kenya, grand vision and soaring imagination is
> illegitimate; here,
> they just call you naive. Out there, you stand a chance of
> becoming
a
> hero; at home, you will have nothing but the taste of ashes
> in your
> mouth. Mothers, take your children abroad.
> >
> > Barack Obama has written two books, in which he
> discusses ideas. Ideas.
> This is a man with vision and conviction, and enough good
> ideas that
> even those who do not like the pigmentally-advantaged are
> listening, and
> changing their minds.
> >
> > Even those who think that his name sounds suspiciously
> like a
> terrorist's are reading his books and listening to his
> speeches, and
> changing their minds. This is a man with interesting and
> inspiring
> things to say - which disqualifies him from any Kenyan-ness
> we would
> have liked to claim.
> >
> > Americans like the image of them that Barack Obama has
> painted in words;
> which Kenyan leader would
dare to build dreams bigger than
> his roots?
> Which Kenyan leader would ever be so foolish as to attempt
> inspiration
> instead of instigation?
> >
> > Barack Obama has seduced the world by the power of his
> persuasiveness,
> and while Kenyans raise another glass to the
> accomplishments of "one of
> our own," it seems clear to me that we gave up our
> rights to him when we
> gave up our hopes for ourselves. When we settled for
> incompetence, and
> corruption, and callousness, we defined ourselves out of
> his universe,
> and out of his dreams.
> >
> > We rejected Barack Obama-ness when we allowed those
> pangas to slash our
> dreams, when we watched our hopes spiral away in smoke. We
> allowed the
> ones who had done this to become the only mirrors of
> ourselves, and then
> squelched our
disgraced selves back to the mire of our
> despondency.
> >
> > Barack Obama cannot be a Kenyan, and Kenyans cannot
> grasp Barack Obama's
> dream. We have already despaired of it, and of ourselves.
> His dream
> would have died with ours, here at home, here in the
> graveyard of hope.
> >
> > But oh, how we yearn to see ourselves reflected in his
> eyes...
> >
> >
> > *Wambui Mwangi is an assitant professor of Political
> Science at the
> University of Toronto, Canada. This article first appeared
> inThe East
> African, June 15 2008.
> >
> > *Please send comments to
editor@pambazuka.org or
>
comment online at
>
http://www.pambazuka.org/> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
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> >
> > This message was sent to:
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