Whether you like him or not, respect Deputy President

Notwithstanding Deputy President William Ruto’s political party, as a Kenyan, you should always treat such a leader with the respect that his office deserves. Quite naturally, the constitutional concept of free expression gives you the right to criticise all officials in some way. This is what usually contributes to binding all leaders and potential leaders into conducting themselves in a manner acceptable socially and nationally.

Yet in our country, does anybody have any right whatsoever to hurl rude, crude and unreasonable adjectives at him, her or any other human being? Yet the question remains: How does that statement affect your constitutionally protected right to comment critically on the activities of your leaders and fellow ordinary citizens?

For me, the importance of that question is that it can and does travel in both directions. Among human beings, only if I treat you well and with respect, might you feel naturally urged — sometimes even self-compelled — to treat me and my kind with similar respect. If you give it the thought that I think it deserves, you should be able to see that this is the way in which all members of the human species should regard themselves.

If you want the world to treat you with kindness and respect, you must first try to treat the world in the same way. No, by that statement, I do not mean that our political systems should slap a ban on all negative criticism. The only ban that I would happily slap if I were in power would be upon the thoughtless hurling of certain prejudiced and offensive ethnic, gender, racial and religious adjectives.

A prejudice is called so because your brain has arrived at it without any real knowledge and thoughtful analysis. You have acquired it without any objective knowledge of the person, tribe, race, religion or social or natural system at which an appallingly large number of human beings the whole world over — especially the Caucasian Euro-North Americans — hurl the most thoughtless and insolent ethno-racial adjectives upon Third World peoples.

In Kenya, for instance, the Kikuyu and my own Luo ethnic groups usually receive the most prejudiced adjectives from other ethnic groups. But I once lived and worked for a long time in Mediterranean Europe (in France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland). It helped me to understand a great deal of Caucasian Europe’s usual prejudices against other human races, especially Africa’s so-called “Negroes”.

Notwithstanding Caucasian Western European and North American racial conceit, my education — especially the self-acquired aspect of my knowledge — has helped me a great deal to understand the objective roots of Europe’s powerful urge to arrive at certain extremely negative conclusions about other human races and ethnicities — especially about my Nilo-Negro race.

In the famous Swiss city of Geneva, once upon a time, I lived for years with an extraordinarily intelligent Caucasian (Irish) lady. But racial marriages are always so extraordinarily delicate that any wind — however slight — might always blow one apart — which was probably why my marriage to that extraordinarily intelligent Irish woman was bound to disintegrate sooner than later.

No, I do not advise you or anybody against your intended interracial or inter-religious or intertribal marriage. My own marriage once upon a time to an extraordinarily intelligent Irish woman taught me vital lessons about humanity’s specific divisions, such as nations, nationalities, tribes, races and religions. Indeed, I learned very many vital lessons from my Irish partner of many years.

My considered advice, however, is thus clear. Considering marriage, you should never go for any man or woman merely because of his or her tribe, race or religion. Do choose your partner only because of his or her individual character and potential contribution to your imagined life and career enjoyment and ambition.