[Imc-africa] Article on the unrest in Kenya

[Bwakali David John]

  DEATH OF A DREAM
  By John Bwakali
   
  ‘They have killed Mugabe Were.’ My mind did not immediately register what my friend was saying on the phone. After all, his phone call at 6AM had woken me up. ‘Who has killed who?’ I blurted out. ‘They have killed him,’ he repeated. ‘They have killed Mugabe Were. He was shot dead outside his house a few hours ago.’ The message sank in as I sank back to the couch where I had spent the night in my brother’s office after being evicted from my former house because I didn’t belong to the right ethnic community. 
   
  Mugabe Were was a 39 year old member of parliament of my constituency, Embakasi. The first time I ever saw his photo was less than two months ago. I was traveling in a matatu towards my brother’s house when I glanced out of the window and saw a campaign poster that made me smile as I looked back at it in admiration. ‘Another Embakasi is possible!’ the poster screamed. Next to these words, borrowed from the slogan of the World Social Forum, was Mugabe Were. Unlike other campaign posters, he wasn’t looking into the camera but far away towards the horizon, with a young child next to him. It’s as if he was saying through the poster that today may be lousy but we can make tomorrow great so that this child can have a great today! It was a campaign season and posters were all over the place. So for one to stick out and inspire in this manner, there had to be something different about the guy the poster was talking about.
   
  I was later to find out that indeed, there was something different about Mugabe Were. I had gone to visit MAONO, a group of enterprising young people from Dandora, a ghetto in Eastern Nairobi. When I was talking to them about the soccer and sports that seemed to fill their every waking moment, I noticed that the name of Mugabe Were kept popping up. They spoke of him not as the guy who wanted to their member of parliament or the guy who represented them at Nairobi City Council. They spoke of him as the guy next door – a friend they could count on. When he later won the nominations of the Orange Democratic Movement Party, he seemed to be a step closer to the big move from a council seat to a parliamentary seat. This constituency was the biggest in the country and if he won, he would be carrying the hopes and dreams of thousands upon thousands of people from the low income bracket.
   
  On the night of December 29, I got to learn that Mugabe Were had won the parliamentary seat of Embakasi. Immediately, I remembered his campaign poster. I remembered his exhortation that ‘another Embakasi is possible.’ Now he would have the difficult task of translating this aspiration into reality. The kids in Dandora and thousands of other constituents were counting on him to prove that their votes had not been misplaced and their hopes would not be dashed. 
   
  A song by Kalamashaka, the godfathers of hiphop in Kenya has a line that goes this way, ‘I don’t know my member of parliament because he disappeared after elections and I know that he will reappear just before the next elections.’ This had been the sorry tale of many members of parliament in Kenya. They often campaigned vigorously for several months preceding national elections only to disappear for four and a half years. Although they do make appearances in their constituencies, there is often no concrete agenda for delivering on their campaign promises. The people of Embakasi were almost sure that this would not be the case with Mugabe Were. After all, he had lived in Dandora for most of his life. 
   
  The crime that was exacerbated by thousands of unemployed youth making Embakasi one of Nairobi’s most dangerous constituency. They hoped that he would find a way of annihilating not just the crime but also the idleness amongst the youth. After all, his late mother had sold illicit brew for a living not because it was her destiny but because it was her plight as a poor single mother. The illnesses that festered in bad sanitation. They hoped that he would implement programs that would inject health into their communities. After all, he knew what it was like to be sick, not because of your mortality but because of your vulnerability. 
   
  But on a cold January night, their dreams died with him. Somehow, they must recapture these hopes, because if they don’t, dangerous seeds would have been planted.  
   
  Note
  Three days after Mugabe Were was shot, David Too, another opposition MP was shot dead by a traffic police officer in what the government said was a love triangle gone sour. The Opposition and slain MP’s family disputed this.
  
       
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