The threat to suspend Kass FM’s broadcasting licence must be seen as wider failure of our institutions. The strongly worded letter to the radio station is another classic case of selective application of the law. Those Kenyans who are gifted to speak and understand numerous local dialects will readily attest that Kass’s case is blown out of proportion to serve political and selfish interests.It was no surprise that the threat to Kass came in the heat of Moi’s warning to ban vernacular stations claiming they preach hatred. Well, the truth is that Toro is crying foul for being outwitted in his own game. His stands on his plastic moral pedestal oblivious of his own neck deep partnership to fertilize the same malice he is condemning. By using proxies Moi is simply seeking political revenge on the Kalenjins whom he thought were at his beck and call. The old man is is livid with anger at the trashing of his reputation and subsequent thrashing of his sons at the last polls. How I wish he knew we live in a different age and era where elites can reach villagers in the first tongue. Uncle Dan’s antics through his connections in the present regime simply amount to a passionate poisoned Kiss to Kalenjins.
Besides exposing failed institutions the reprimand to Kass is a shameless case of double standards. There is no worse tribal incitement that what is packaged as parables aimed at denigrating others as lesser human beings. Fear of the elite brainwashing the villagers using their mother tongue doesn’t wash. Which is more threatening and demeaning between Kass letting callers contribute to amnesty debate and Ngugi campaigning in his mother tongue to warn his tribesmen never to allow WOLVE to take charge of the flock?
Coloured deception
The government is only acting smart in glossing the fear of unity amongst the Kalenjins. How paradoxical it is that Kass is being accused for mobilizing the Kipsigis to vote for their own in Kilgoris while the government unwittingly falls for the tribal bait in reminding the Masaais to reject domination by outsiders? Replicate the government’s cheap politics in the wider Rift Valley and see the hypocrisy and futility of the so-called reconciliation and healing.
The government’s fear is premised in the fact that radio is a vital tool of communicating to the villagers. Radio does not only entertain the rural folks, it educates and mobilizes them into a common course. The political and ruling elite is simply running scared of the fear of reverse domination. Fear mongering has no place in the present political dispensation. Moi tried demonizing the opposition by running Rwanda genocide strips and it didn’t fly. Similarly demonizing the vernacular FM stations by drawing the misplaced 1994 Rwanda analogy must be told to the birds so that they fly high in the sky. We must disabuse our rulers of deception in its shades.
