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Super-officials, impunity and the arc of the moral universe

 

I often think about the late Amb. Bethuel Kiplagat, one of the most impressive and accomplished men I have had the honour of meeting. Endowed with razor-sharp, restless intellect, keen sense of occasion and devastating humour, Kiplagat was the quintessential diplomat.

Indeed, his storied career stood on a monumental foundation of prodigious achievement in the peace-building sector, rising to the highest reaches of power.  By the time he strode into glorious retirement, Kiplagat was a much admired, abundantly decorated public servant, magnificent in his erect posture, imperious in his firm stride, charming with his dazzling smile and distinguished with his shock of combed-back white hair.

After the post-election cataclysm in 2008, the National Accord decreed the inauguration of Agenda 4 institutions, one of which was a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, with a broad mandate to palpate Kenya's body politic, locate our numerous sores, suppurating with injustice, to lance it with accountability, soothe it with the balm of restitution and apology, and dress it with the bandages of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Cathartic spectacle

The idea of a TJRC borrowed heavily from the cathartic spectacle of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, so ably led by the charismatic Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who passed on this week.

Kenya needed its Desmond Tutu, a formidable personage replete with credibility and the intellectual bandwidth to command such a tremendous undertaking. Kiplagat was designated to be Kenya's Tutu.

His resemblance with Nelson Mandela did no harm to the cause and could only enhance his Tutu quotient. The best laid plans of grand coalition governments and mice often go awry.

From the moment of his appointment, Kiplagat was besieged by a colossal spectre, the sinister ghost of past atrocities long suppressed, denied and desperately forgotten.

In 1984, the government formulated a militarised response to inter-clan violence in Wajir. The Kenya Army had built a military airstrip in the region, and generally demonstrated its serikaliness, much in the way a resurgent KDF does nowadays.

On February 14, 1984, thousands of Degodia men were rounded up and penned on the burning airstrip tarmac, in a land notorious for infernal daytime heat.

Torture, execution, starvation and dehydration led to the deaths of thousands of Kenyans.

In auditing Kenya's interminable annals of state-sponsored atrocity, the Wagalla massacre was going to form part of the TJRC's workload. Kiplagat, Permanent Secretary at the time, was alleged to have been in a delegation of state officials who had visited Wagalla moments before the massacre.

A fastidious man by all accounts, Kiplagat resisted allegations linking him to the reprehensible state actions, vigorously combating efforts to remove him from the commission.

Cloud of scandal

Eventually, he stepped aside under a stormy cloud of scandal, returning two years later to a commission on its last legs as it staggered, then crawled to a convulsive finish.

Its report adversely profiled Kiplagat, its chairman.

Even if he had neither chaired nor served on the TJRC, Kiplagat was bound to be implicated as he was. The state's show of might in Wajir in 1984 was finally seen in its proper light, as a shameful display of criminal impunity in 2008.

And even if he was innocent with regard to the horror on that burning tarmac in 1984, craven bureaucratic connivances had compounded the suspicion which exploded so spectacularly three decades later, effectively foreclosing his side of the story.

Clearly, state power and privilege ultimately devolve into personal accountability for corruption and impunity. No crime is ever committed in good faith or in the public interest.

To demonstrate their power, our "super CSs" and "super PSs" are engrossed in vast performances of breathtaking impunity.

The lives extinguished and voices stilled in their rampage now live as memories of pain, cries of sorrow and irrepressible scars of insatiable grievance awaiting justice and accountability.

Kiplagat never went on TV to boast or taunt. Neither did he publicly threaten or order the infliction of deadly violence on fellow Kenyans. Just one allegation of a trip to Wajir in 1984 was enough to irrevocably stain his otherwise impeccable career, and deny him the honour of becoming Kenya's Tutu.

Pall of ignominy

In their last days, there was nothing super about Kenya's most formidable super-CSs and super-PSs, including Mbiyu Koinange, GG Kariuki, Nicholas Biwott and Hezekiah Oyugi.

Instead, a putrid pall of ignominy and odium overhung them, like a dreadful, otherworldly miasma.

David Mwiraria, ravaged by terminal illness, was towed, in his hospital bed, to attend trial in a case where Karuga Koinange, former Treasury PS famously lamented his dire straits, demanding its summary determination to spare him the bankrupting sword of Damocles it had become.

Accountability for the powerful remains worse than imperfect in Kenya, yet assuredly, there never is a moment's peace in retirement for the wicked in power.

We were so close to crowning our Tutu, but the arc of the moral universe is longer than the arm of the law.    BY DAILY NATION   

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