Ngwatilo

That is the media and/or publics assessment of the recent University of Nairobi student demonstration. Yes, the thing did not go as well as they promised, yes there was looting and yes, a legal demonstration is not the sort of thing that should necessitate teargas but, listening to the feedback, you would think that no one has any right to stage a protest over anything, least of all the inexplicable seemingly politically motivated murder of the two men who worked for the Oscar Foundation. Extra-judicial killings or extra-Mungiki killings, the message echoed is that we shouldn’t have to be bothered to hear or experience a protest over an inexplicable thing. We should put it aside, forget it, go about our business as usual.

Business as usual did not prevent the violence that sprung up at the end of December 2007. Perhaps what University of Nairobi Student leadership require is some teaching on what non-violent demonstration entails, either from civil society or their own faculty. Such a course ought to teach how to prevent violent demonstrations carried in the name of “University Students”, because it is they that are ultimately responsible for that name.

It is stupidity to instead tell them not to demonstrate, in my opinion. They’ve already crossed that bridge many times over the years; it is their modus operandi. Actually, precisely because they are wont to protest every so often, we ought to have invested in steering their need for protest in more positive turns. This time around they said they wanted to do it peacefully, they received permission to do so. Did we help them achieve this? I would argue that giving them the opportunity and space to do so was only half the task.

My argument follows a simple premise, that by virtue of the fact that they are in University and in one of the more academically respected universities in the country at that, they are: 1) a people driven by reason – even the more intelligent among us; 2) they have already worked hard to be where they are and as such, they are committed to their education, to learning, to the social and economic development of themselves, their families and their communities, to the preservation and fulfillment of the desired “bright future” - in summary, university students are not hooligans.

If they are it is we who have allowed or made them so, by being poor examples, frustrating their ambitions or not being proactive enough about steering their energies. My most awesome years of university were those spent learning to care, learning the mind of wrong, and methods others had chosen to effect ‘rightness’ in various fields. I’ve woken up and smelled Nairobi after my graduation and have regrettably gotten caught up in making my little life work.

We, as folk out of university or who never attended, are rarely qualified to increase or pass judgement upon university kids capacity for good citizenship. We ourselves don’t know how; we have forgotten; we are not interested. We do our things, go to our places, murmur quietly about our mobile provider, our government, how hard it is to find an honest policeman as we sit sipping lattes and black forest cake, or tea and chapatti depending on the pocket: – these for us are subjects for social conversation, not social, political or entrepreneurial action. If our ‘youths’ are our future leaders, the least we can do is encourage them to engage with our socio-political and economic issues, and not stick their heads in their law, medicine, media, technology or commerce books. Sure they will come out as qualified lawyers, journalists, doctors, IT gurus, businessmen, politicians etc, but who shall lead them? If they have no guiding moral or ethical principles – no leadership capacity (I could say the same for people who remain ‘churchgoers’) – what good are they to us? This country shall ever be a hollow shell, a country of worker bees. Apathy at the end, is too costly.