Wetang’ula and exactly how not to defend oneself

As my people, the Luo, habitually say in proverb, ling’ lo duoko. In other words, concerning certain very serious reports – especially controversial accusations – it is much more helpful to keep your mouth shut than to deny any accusation, especially in frivolous anger. Yet, according to a long-serving Member of Kenya’s Parliament, it is a “non-issue” even if fake gold is being sold in Kenya’s shops and markets.

It is, of course, your right to deny such an accusation, especially if you are a Government spokesman or woman. It is, however, quite a different problem to dismiss it simply as “a non-issue”. For to do so is to announce to all and sundry that such activities do not bother your mind.

In other words, said the Bungoma Senator, Mr Moses Wetang’ula, to raise any concern about such goods being sold in our country is to involve oneself in a “non-issue”. Yet nobody had alleged that Mr Wetang’ula was the guilty one. Nevertheless, he has every right to try to defend his class of citizens against any such implication.

What will startle you, however, is the suggestion by that very senior and long-serving lawmaker that it is quite proper for anybody to sell such illicit goods anywhere in our country at any time. For, accordingly, it is a “non-issue” for anybody to make such a claim. I say it is, indeed, hunky-dory if Mr Wetang’ula himself is not involved in any such activity.

The only surprising thing is that he does not appear even to see it as a national issue. What may bother the observer’s mind is that a senior member of the legislative house should make such a statement to deny even the suggestion that a foreigner might be involved.

Yet there are a million and a half ways of saying that you are innocent without drawing any unwanted attention to yourself. In other words, Mr Wetangula may be completely innocent. Yet you can deny any charge without attracting anybody’s interest in the possibility that your aim is merely to defend yourself about a certain anti-social activity.

On Thursday, nevertheless,  the Bungoma senator was reported as dismissing as a “non-issue” a Daily Nation report the day before that he had been involved in a certain socio-morally questionable transaction.

Indeed, Mr Wetang’ula might have been completely uninvolved in such an activity. He might be legitimately angry at any intentional attempt to involve him in something about which he is completely innocent. But I have worked for daily newspapers for many decades, both in East Africa – usually, indeed, as a “gatekeeper” -- and in Europe (“gatekeeper” being a legitimate description of any newspaper employee known as a “sub-editor”).

Sub-editors are desk-bound employees who ensure that everything entering a newspaper’s page is both accurate and in correct and polite language. It is the sub-editors’ concern to prevent any material that is socially untoward or incorrect and personally unjust from entering into any of the pages of their newspaper issue.

They ensure that everything that enters into any of those pages is not only accurate but also couched in a language that is both correct in terms of grammar but also engaging and polite. Whenever anything insolent or impolite enters the pages of a newspaper, it is usually a sub-editorial failing, usually vigorously condemned internally.

Sub-editors – if you have never heard of their excellencies – are the technical newsroom hands who, among a hundred other things, ensure that all the articles entering any page – and their headlines – are in correct, forceful and polite language and that all the pages are neat and compellingly attractive.