HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATIBA

Fourteen years ago euphoria swept the nation. Few nations have had the privilege of starting again under conditions of peace. It was the dawn of a new Kenya. In the manner of the French, a second republic. Finally we had overcome Moi-ism and Kenyatta-ism. Finally we can now heal from the past by building a United future. Prosperity beckoned. Hope was in the air. Patriotism soared.

But now, as the Katiba enters the age of adolescence, we have families mourning the death of peaceful protesters, and innocents abducted by unidentified policemen. Where did things go wrong? Or, as I suspect, are we on the right track and we don't even know it?

Society and Government

CoK 2010 is a brilliant document. Too brilliant I don't even think the drafters realise. The great struggle of any Constitution is to properly define how to limit government. For far too long, including the colonial era, government was limitless with regard to the native black African population. The State had vested in itself absolute power. This as I have previously described is blasphemy, for what is tyranny but the usurping of the position of God in the lives of men?

CoK 2010 achieved this brilliantly in the first two lines of article 1. A distinction is made between the governed and the government. And yes what people focus on most is the more exciting principle of perpetual revolution found there in. However, those two lines subtly delineate the fact that it is the governed, society, that governs the government. It is the sovereign who rules meaning the only subject according to CoK 2010, is the government itself.

This principle is itself the whole of the Constitution. It is an aspiration yet to take full effect but whose magnitude is thermo-nuclear. I cannot overstate its importance.

A liberal Constitution requires society strong enough to limit government

In order to limit government, which for the length of human existence has been the dream of all liberty loving peoples, the governed must create society strong enough to do it. A Constitution is definitely the starting step...I mean what are we constituting if not the government.

How the powers of government are arranged is itself the most effective bill of rights

But, that Constitution however marvelous, has to be strengthened by society that can enforce its rule over the government. This is why authoritarian states invest heavily in propaganda and manipulation of society to maintain control. As one young revolutionary said:

When we lose our fear, they lose their power

Conclusion

Even if the powers that should not be amend the Constitution to remove Article 1, the damage is already done. The people are marching toward the inevitable creation of that society that will enforce the rule of the governed on the government. This was what was lacking, and through the continued imprudence of impunity, the people have been forced to catch up to the high principles in the CoK 2010.

We are past Stalingrad and Kursk. The road to Berlin lies ahead. In the name of our sacred dead, let us finish this war with a thunderclap! Happy birthday Katiba!