Charles Onyango-Obbo's Fucked up thought process

 Most people of above average intellect know the Daily Nation has really lousy editorials and even lousier opinion writers. Most of their opinion section is full of lowbrow opinions and cow shit. It's so bereft of any intellectual coherence you wonder how any of these guys ever got to land Kenya's best piece of journalistic real estate.

Take Onyango-Obbo's latest piece on Kenya's future political landscape. In it, her writes:

     In Africa, when a country gets to have a noisy national disagreement over real issues other than tribe, then it is   making progress. Now, eight months later, Kenya is in the midst of another row — this time over the impending trial of the Ocampo Six. 

The above statement completely ignores that the whole "Ocampo six" issue has completely taken on a tribal factor. It has become Kikuyu & Kalenjin issue. Its always good to engage in wishful thinking or a positivism ladden political opining but that doesn't conceal the whole undercurrent of tribalism that's brewing below the surface.

    However, the more interesting issue is how persecution leads to the evolution of new identities. Take Israel.  Apart from a few religious shrines (the Wailing Wall), its most enduring national symbols are built mostly around the World War II genocide in which about 6 million Jews perished.

That experience defines Israel and the global Jewish movement. A Jewish dissident can be anti-Zionist, denounce Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as criminal, but there is one thing he cannot do – deny the genocide.

We see the same thing with the Tutsi of Rwanda, and the Diaspora. The genocide of 1994 in which one million  people, mostly Tutsi, were killed, defines nearly all aspects of being a Tutsi – and a Rwandan – today.

Did he just compare the PEV of 2008 to the Rwandan Genocide that Killed 800 000 people in 100 days or the death of 6 million Jews in the 2nd world war? Not only is this the biggest exaggeration ever written, its an immoral bloviation and a grossly emboldened idiocy. 

Then he goes on to tell us an anecdotal evidence from a supposed friend of his, which of course according to him is a perfect fit for all that is going in central. This is true because Charles Onyango-Obbo said so. Oh and  just incase you missed the memo, now anyone can be labelled 'PEV denier', a completely meaningless phrase that is lazily borrowed from the concept of holocaust denier and Rwanda's Genocide ideology policy.

In conclusion, the pseudo-epiphany of this article is that Kenya will go through turbulent waters before its democracy is perfected. Gee, how come none of us ever thought of that! Color me unimpressed that the daily nation prostitutes these guys as the country's premier thinkers.