The Horrors of Shakahola: A Reply to Onyango Makagutu

On 6th May 2023, The Elephant published my article, “The Horrors of Shakahola: Which Way Forward?” Onyango Makagutu was kind enough not only to read my article, but also to prepare a written response to it titled “where do we go from here”. Below I reply to his response. To my assertion that part of why people are religious is that they have a hunger for the spiritual, Makagutu says there are many human beings who have no hunger for the spiritual – who do not have “the God-shaped vacuum”. It is not possible to resolve this matter conclusively here. All I can say is that I have met many who claimed to be avid atheists, only for them to begin talking about God in their sunset years, suggesting that their atheistic assertions might really have been acts of trying to silence the vacuum - forgive the rather dissonant figure of speech here. While Makagutu states that I made an argument about “the God-shaped vacuum”, I only made a statement about it, and there is a vast difference between a statement and an argument. A statement is a single assertion, while an argument is an assertion based on other assertions. Besides, while he claims that my argument is false, arguments are never true or false, only valid or invalid, inductively weak or inductively strong. Makagutu then takes issue with my assertion that those who fall into the Shakahola-type deception have not studied their Bibles well. He claims that there is no objective standard for distinguishing true from false prophets. He even refers me to Ezekiel 13:1-7, where Yahweh condemns false prophets, to which I say, “Well done!” If we begin from the presumption that the Holy Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God, then it does give very specific criteria for distinguishing true from false prophets; but if we deny the veracity of the Holy Bible, then we arrive at Makagutu’s inference that there is no reliable criterion for distinguishing true from false prophets. In my case, I believe that “All Scripture [the Holy Bible] is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17, NASB). Makagutu’s response to my answer to my second question, namely, whether there is any difference between political and religious fanaticism, is unclear, so I hope he will make it clear in due course. On the third question of what is to be done, Makagutu is emphatic that I provide no answer - that the self-regulation I propose is no answer. I disagree: self-regulation based on clear guidelines is an answer which protects the public both from state tyranny and religious fanaticism. Makagutu claims that as an academic I should have proposed education that encourages critical thinking, as well as ridicule of some religious beliefs as a way forward. Pointing to my position as an academic is engaging in ad hominem - attacking the person rather than his/her ideas. What is more, Makagutu’s proposing of recommendations that he thinks I should have made is to suggest that I ought to think as he does, and this looks to me like an element of intolerance. All in all, while I disagree with most of Makagutu’s responses, I am delighted that he has contributed to this important public debate, and I thank him once again most sincerely for this.

Valentine’s Day Celebrations: Another Opportunity for the Sons and Daughters of Africa to Remain Poor

Dear Sons and Daughters of Africa Today is 14th February, 2022, and so many among us are excited about celebrating a European festival whose history they do not even know - St. Valentine’s Day. Like them, I have not done my utmost best to find out its history until a few moments ago, when I have consulted an online encyclopedia – Encyclopedia.com, which says: According to tradition, St. Valentine is the patron saint of courtship, travelers, and young people. One story says that he was a Roman priest who became a martyr because he helped persecuted Christians around a.d. 270. Sent to prison, he restored the sight of a blind girl, who fell in love with him. According to another tale, Valentine was a young man awaiting execution. He loved the jailer's daughter and signed a farewell message to her "From your Valentine." What is clear from the above exerpt is that the origin of the day is not really known. Nevertheless, there is considerable information on how it has developed to what it is now. The Encyclopedia.com Goes on to note: Early celebrations in honor of St. Valentine took place in the middle of February, around the time of an ancient Roman pagan festival known as the Lupercalia. It was customary for men to draw the name of a young girl from a box and celebrate the festival with her. The Christian church substituted names of saints for the women, and individuals who picked them were supposed to draw inspiration from the lives of the saints. During the Middle Ages, St. Valentine's feast day on February 14 became known as a day for lovers. The custom of sending valentines to a loved one on St. Valentine's Day may have come from the belief that birds begin to choose their mates on that day. What is most worrying about the excitement with European festivals is that it is a symptom of deep-seated mental colonization. In The Invention of Africa, the celebrated Congolese philosopher, V.Y. Mudimbe, memorably wrote: “colonialism and colonization basically mean organization, arrangement. The two words derive from the latin word colére, meaning to cultivate or to design.” Mudimbe goes on to point out that the colonists (those settling a region), as well as the colonialists (those exploiting a territory by dominating a local majority) have all tended to organize and transform non-European areas into fundamentally European constructs. This is evident in many facets of our lives, not least the numerous European festivals that many of us celebrate - Christmas, Boxing Day, St. Valentine’s Day, Easter (not Passover), Fathers’ Days and Mothers’ Days (there seems to be two of each), and even Halloween. My brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of Africa, what many of you have not realized is that capitalists passionately love the way you celebrate these European holidays because they are opportunities for transferring cash from your bank accounts to theirs. Thus although you have hardly recovered from your unwise spending decisions just two months ago during the Christmas season, you are again splashing today, and will be splashing yet again over easter - less than two months from now. Yet this kind of reckless spending is part of why you remain poor, for expenditure on luxury items rather than on ventures that multiply your cash will never help to build up your financial resources. A Jewish wise man made this point thus: “He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man: he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich” (Proverbs 21:17). The worst form of colonisation is that of the mind, because whoever is colonized that way does not have what it takes to resist the one putting him/her down. As Steve Biko correctly observed, the most powerful weapon in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. Thus to borrow Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s famous saying, we need to decolonize the mind.

Why Boarding Schools are Incurable Monsters of Colonialism

For at least three years now, I have run the hashtag #AbolishBoardingSchools in response to the mayhem in those institutions. One of the things I have said repeatedly is that boarding schools are part of the ignominious British colonial heritage. How is this so? First, as the renowned Congolese philosopher, V.Y. Mudimbe explains in The Invention of Africa (1988), the terms ‘colonialism’ and ‘colonization’ basically mean ‘organization’ or ‘arrangement’, having been derived from the latin word colere, meaning ‘to cultivate’ or ‘to design’. He then makes the important point that Western colonialism organizes and transforms non-European areas into fundamentally European constructs (p.14). He elaborates on this point as follows: … it is possible to use three main keys to account for the modulations and methods representative of colonial organization: the procedures of acquiring, distributing, and exploiting lands in colonies; the policies of domesticating natives; and the manner of managing ancient organizations and implementing new modes of production. Thus, three complementary hypotheses and actions emerge: the domination of physical space, the reformation of natives' minds, and the integration of local economic histories into the Western perspective. These complementary projects constitute what might be called the colonizing structure, which completely embraces the physical, human, and spiritual aspects of the colonizing experience (p.15). Furthermore, scholars in Africa have for long explained that the Western European colonisers used a three-pronged approach to achieve their domineering goal: 1. Violence to subdue the peoples whom they invaded. 2. Religion to soften the subdued peoples to minimize the cost of a sustained military operation. 3. Formal education to provide a justificatory ideology that would sustain the colonial structures for decades, if not centuries. Boarding schools were crucial to the implementation of the third plunk of the strategy: • Take away children from their homes for long periods of time, thereby reducing their parents’ influence on them. • Teach the youth separated from their parents the culture of the colonizer as though it were objective truth – modes of dressing, eating, talking, along with a Eurocentric formal education meant to convince the young minds that there was no knowledge in Africa prior to colonialism, and that, therefore, colonialism was a “savior” rather than a destroyer. • Send the brain-washed young minds back home with a false sense of superiority, thereby grossly diminishing the authority of their parents over them: they now believed that their parents were ignorant because they had not attended the coloniser’s ‘education system’. Those who run today’s boarding schools are the direct or indirect products of the colonial boarding schools, and so continue to perpetuate the colonial ideology which says that Africa is backwards and needs ‘development’.

The Place of Homeschooling in the Re-opened, Post-COVID-19 Kenyan Basic Education Sector

Memorandum
To
The National COVID-19 Education Response Committee
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION
REPUBLIC OF KENYA
From
Reginald M.J. Oduor, Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
University of Nairobi
22nd May, 2020


TITLE:
The Place of Homeschooling in the Re-opened, Post-COVID-19 Kenyan Basic Education Sector

1. Background
I present this memorandum as:
A. A trainer of high school teachers with thirty (30) years experience teaching Education Students in the Kenyan public university system at both undergraduate and post-graduate level.
B. A citizen deeply concerned about the unfair and unreasonable treatment that home-schooling parents have received in Kenya since the passing of the Basic Education Act No.14 of 2013.

Home-schooling in Kenya: The Legal Environment
The term “home-schooling” refers to a situation in which parents take direct charge of their children’s formal education. Homeschooling is not a specific curriculum, but rather the delivery of any curriculum by the parents themselves. Several Kenyan families have home-schooled their children from the early 1990s using a variety of curricula, including 8-4-4, I.G.C.S.E., and Accelerated Christian Education. A number of Kenyan children have completed their high school education through Home-schooling and have been admitted to universities inside and outside Kenya, and several are already employed, while others have ventured into entrepreneurship.

The Constitution of Kenya recognises the right of the child to education. Article 43 (1) (f) lists education as one of the fundamental rights of every person. Furthermore, Article 53 (1) (b) states that every child has the right to free and compulsory basic education. Nevertheless, neither of the articles limits education to the school environment.


However, Home-schooling Kenyan parents have lately been alarmed by the fact that the Basic Education Act 2013 includes provisions that presume that education can only be attained through institutionalised schools. For example, Article 28 of the Act, titled “Right of Child to Free and Compulsory Education”, states that “The Cabinet Secretary shall implement the right of every child to free and compulsory basic education” (Article 28(1)), but the tenor of the Act is that such education can only happen in the context of an institutional school. Indeed, several homeschooling parents have been arrested, and in at least one instance, charged with violating the provisions of the Basic Education Act 2013.

Rationale for Facilitating Home-schooling in the Era of COVID-19
The advent of COVID-19, with measures such as social distancing and enhanced hygiene, requires that the government undertakes an objective evaluation of its position on homeschooling.

Home-schooling, as a viable model for formal education, is justifiable on the following grounds:
1. Education is the equipping of the young with requisite knowledge, skills and attitudes that enable them to participate in the life of the society.
2. Despite the rise of formal school education, the responsibility of providing education primarily rests with parents. Consequently, parents who take their children to school are merely delegating rather than abdicating this responsibility, and this is evident in the practice of schools regularly meeting parents to brief them on their children’s progress.
3. The ideal model of education is one in which the child gets maximum personalised attention. By the very nature of the size of a typical family, a home-schooled child gets much better personalised attention than a child in a typical institutional school. As such, parents who are willing to provide such personalised attention at home, often at great sacrifice to themselves, ought not to be denied the right to do so.
4. The personalised attention referred to in (3) above is critical for exceptionally gifted children, as well as for children with disabilities. For example, the public school system is grossly ill-equipped to provide education for children with autism, but some parents of such children are diligently working to provide them with high quality education in the home environment. Consequently, criminalising home-schooling, as the Basic Education Act 2013 has done, violates the right of such children to high quality education in contravention of Article 54 of the Constitution.
5. Allowing parents to take their children to private schools while denying others the right to educate theirs at home is discriminatory contrary to Article 27 of the Constitution.
6. While many have the false impression that homeschooling is unstructured, most homeschooling parents use curricula that are closely monitored by highly qualified personnel, thereby ensuring the maintenance of high standards of curriculum delivery. In addition, some of the curricula used in homeschools require that parents get prior training in their use.
7. While many have the impression that homeschooled children are isolated, their parents form networks that facilitate regular joint activities among the children. Besides, the parents enroll their children in various activities outside their homes such as football, swimming, and music lessons. In addition, there are joint annual events for various home-schooling groups.
8. There is no evidence that children who have gone through homeschooling are disadvantaged in comparison with those who have attended institutional schools.

Recommendations
I therefore passionately plead with your esteemed Committee to help secure the rights of parents who wish to take up the noble task of personally being in charge of their children’s formal education, thereby contributing to the much-needed space for social distancing in our schools. Towards this end, I recommend the following specific measures:
(1) That the Government facilitates rather than frustrates parents who are both willing and able to provide home-schooling for their children. Such facilitation includes making online resources developed by the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development readily available to them.
(2) That the Government moves with speed to amend the Basic Education Act No.14 of 2013, with a view to expunging from it all provisions that explicitly or implicitly criminalise home-schooling.
(3) That the Government initiates a process through which the home-schooling community formulates guidelines to ensure the provision of high quality education in all instances in which parents choose to deploy home-schooling.

Time to preserve our sanity in the Midst of the Covid-19 Pandemic

Dear people, one potential damage of the Covid-19 crisis is the deterioration of mental health, with possible long-term negative effects on individuals and society at large. Too many people are glued to their mobile phones, computers, TV screens or radios waiting for the next thing that is said about the pandemic whether from medical experts, journalists, privately produced video clips, or even what I would call bad old social media gossip. Imbibing all this material is causing many to be preoccupied with the pandemic, and hence to be unproductive. In effect, we are increasingly having people experience mental paralysis - an inability to act due to fear of infection and possible death, keeping them from being useful to their families, friends, colleagues and to themselves. It is certainly wise to regularly update oneself about what is happening: watching or listening to the main news programmes on TV or radio is useful. Reading and/or watching a few well-chosen pieces is also helpful. However, spending the whole day watching and/or listening to Covid-19 talk is an addiction, and every addiction is harmful. Let us remember that most patients recover from this thing, and neither will everyone catch it. What will we do when 30 years from now we find ourselves around, but having been mentally wounded from dying a Thousand times before we actually die? When one seriously considers the current palpable mass anxiety, one would imagine people never die from road and plane accidents, terminal illnesses, chronic conditions, crime, among others. Let us please find a balance between information-gathering and maintaining sanity. A lot of the time spent reading every posting and watching every video could actually be fruitfully spent with family, making money online, or completing a project or two that were just not making progress in the normal hustle and bustle of life. Come on! There will be life after Covid-19, and many of us will be part of it; and whether or not we shall be, it does not make sense to spend these crucial days in fruitless anxiety. Instead, let us take each and every precautionary measure recommended by experts, but let us protect ourselves from becoming mentally ill. Let us arise and be productive: spend quality time with family; call and cheer up family and friends who live alone; clear that clutter which you have wanted to get rid of for years; read that book which you have always wanted to read, but have not found time to do so; complete that research paper; write that newspaper article, poem, novel, play or song; explore new business opportunities online, among many other things waiting for your attention; and if you find these thoughts helpful, pass them on!

Exalting Legality above Morality is Moving Us Closer to the Law of the Jungle

Many Kenyans love to cite legality in total disregard of morality. Thus you will hear a Kenyan politician celebrating his/her victory in an election petition, knowing very well that he/she perpetrated the election offences that gave rise to the petition. Similarly, you will hear striking workers whose industrial action causes untold suffering to thousands, or even millions, insist that their strike is justified because they gave a strike notice within the stipulated time.

 

Nevertheless, legality is subordinate to morality because, ideally, society’s laws emanate from its moral orientation. Except in cases of dictatorship, law is really society effecting greater enforcement of the core of its moral dictates using the coercive instruments of state. Thus morality precedes law because a society’s laws are inspired by its moral outlook. For example, the idea of human rights, which many lawyers have enthusiastically embraced, is essentially moral rather than legal. This is why sound human rights theorists will tell you that a right is something inherent in the bearer of it, and can therefore not be granted by a constitution, but can only be recognised or violated by it.

 

Could it be that the current loud cries of “Haki Yetu” (“Our Rights”) without a corresponding insistence on “Majukumu Yetu” (“Our Responsibilities”) is the result of the mechanistic approach to rights characteristic of our Western-oriented legal system, with its undue emphasis on the rights of the individual in almost total disregard of his/her responsibilities to society? Here I am reminded of a quotation associated with a prominent lawyer in Kenya: “If the law is on your side, bang the law; if the facts are on your side, bang the facts; if neither the law nor the facts are on your side, bang the table.” Note that there is nothing here about paying attention to the voice of conscience, but rather an obsession with winning a case “by all means necessary”.

 

In considerably homogenous traditional societies, the distinction between morality and law is minimal if not non-existent. Thus in my own Dholuo, there is a single word, chik which is most easily translated as “rules”, but which covers both moral rules and legal requirements. The same is true in several other Kenyan languages with which I am familiar, including Gikuyu, Kiswahili, and several Luhya languages (remember that “Luhya” is an umbrella term, popularised in the early 1920s, for more than ten ethnic groups). However, in a morally plural society such as twenty-first century Kenya, there is often a disconnect between morality and law, with several modes of behaviour that are considered to be morally wrong by a sizeable proportion of the population making their way into the list of what is legal to do.

 

Nevertheless, the fact remains that a person who is guided by conscience seldom cites the law on matters that touch the good of society, insisting on the higher law of conscience that restrains human beings from doing wrong whether or not someone is watching. In this regard, the British poet, Matthew Arnold, famously asserted that morality asks us to be self-governed at the feet of law. In other words, for Arnold, one who is morally mature does not really need law, since he/she is committed to doing the right and shunning the wrong without any threat of force characteristic of legal sanction.

 

The central concepts in morality are “rightness of action” and “virtuousness of character”, both of which are determined by the conscience. On the other hand, the core notion in law is “legality”, which simply means anything that is in harmony with the body of legislated rules. This body is best described as shifting sand, as we have witnessed with Kenya’s election laws which have been amended several times over the past ten years. Even the Constitution of Kenya (2010) is likely to be amended fundamentally before the next elections, if media reports about introducing an executive Prime Minister and a one-term, seven-year figurehead presidency are anything to go by. Older Kenyans will also recall the numerous constitutional amendments that were made between 1964 to 1982 to increase the power of the Presidency, leaving the former supreme document in legal tatters, or, to use a different figure of speech, resulting in a mongrel out of the original federalist and parliamentary system that was meticulously negotiated in the Lancaster House conferences.

 

One of the darkest days in Kenya’s history was the one in mid 1982, when the de facto one-party Parliament voted to turn the country into a de jure one-party state: the amendment was legal but immoral. Nevertheless, those who waved the legal card in favour of the amendment insisted that it had been done in accordance with the law - that due process had been followed. Those enthusiastically waving the legal card over the moral one in matters such as elections, industrial action (strikes, go slows, etc.),  and disputes over property had better quickly realise that they are thereby helping to accelerate the pace at which our society is disintegrating. People of conscience do not harp on legality, but rather strive for amendments to the law of the land to better harmonise it with sound moral principles. Only in this way do they slow down the coming of doomsday, when the law of the jungle replaces the moral law which restrains a sizeable proportion of humankind from committing unimaginable attrocities - the day in which we no longer pay attention to morality enjoining us to be self-governed at the feet of law, but instead are free to use legal technicalities to trample as many people as possible in our march towards “self-actualisation”.

In Support of Capital Punishment for Rape: A Response to Edwin Kamau’s Counter-arguments

Between 24^th and 25^th February 2018, Mr. Edwin Kamau responded to a number of tweets that I had posted in favour of capital punishment for rape. My tweets were in response to media reports that a fifteen-year old girl in Wajir had been gang-raped for three days. I asserted that perpetrators of such outrageous crimes are not fit to live. Mr. Kamau was of the view that contrary to my assertion, rape does not deserve the death penalty. I commend him for staying with the issue and offering several counter-arguments to which I wish to respond below. The paragraphs below are not edited to my usual standard, but I have decided to post them here as I find it easier to respond to Mr. Kamau in this way than in a series of tweets. The reader will make greater sense of what I say below by first going through my conversation with Edwin Kamau and Mutinda Kitana from 24^th to 25^th February 2018.

 

Dear Mr. Kamau

You asked if we were not justified to use insights from other jurisdictions such as the US and China. Using the US and China for insight is justifiable as long as we remain responsible for our decisions independently of theirs. The trouble is that many lawyers feel dutybound to treat precedents from overseas as infallible. The Us uses case law, common law, and so do we; but for us this is the result of colonialism, and part of our intellectual emancipation must surely be the endeavour to get rid of colonial baggage that hinders us from striking out in our own path.

 

Applying case law from other jurisdictions without taking cognisance of our own value system does compromise our sovereignty. Never forget that a people’s legal system ought to reflect their ethical value system. Yes it is alright to borrow from the West; but we ought to adapt rather than adopt. Even the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of Kenya 2010 is so terribly individualistic in a most un-African manner: our peoples are communalistic: where are the group rights?

 

You cited “Freedom from cruel and unusual punishment”. Yes this is in our constitution, but the people made the Constitution, so they have a right to interrogate and amend it. The idea of “cruel and unusual punishment” is strange because all punishment has an element of what is being termed “cruelty”: you cannot punish anyone by serving them their favourite meal: you always subject them to something that causes them discomfort. In sum, punishment is, by definition, uncomfortable, and anything uncomfortable can be construed as cruel.

 

Is capital punishment for rape a cruel and unusual punishment? Yes according to Western liberalism; not necessarily so according to our societies that have a communalist orientation.

 

You say in some cases capital punishment is justified to maintain order: I think rape horribly disturbs order and tranquility by causing emotional trauma, often spreading deadly diseases, and sometimes resulting in unwanted conceptions.

 

You say the justice system is for maintaining order but not reparation to the aggrieved? Really? What is the basis for this assertion? Why would capital punishment be justified for treason, murder and terrorism but not for rape? I wonder how many women would agree with you on this one. I am not a woman, but I certainly do not agree because rape destroys order in society. What is your basis for excluding rape from this list? Male bias for a political system dominated by men, and caring little for the plight of women who are usually the victims of rape perpetrated by men?

 

You assert that the justice system is not based on subjective individual’s perception of justice in relation to grievance”? What makes this very assertion objective rather than subjective? Is objectivity even possible in view of the fact that all of us are subjects rather than objects?

 

You cited a US ruling that rape does not deserve the death sentence. I disagree with that ruling because it ignores the plight of the victim, probably on the false assumption that her plight has minimal negative effect on society.

 

You posed the question: “Does rape make [sic] irrepairable damage to the life of the victim”? Some men might say “No”; most women, and some men would say “Yes” – lifelong emotional trauma, unwanted conception, exposure to deadly infections, crisis in the marriage of the rape victim, etc.

 

You said that rape victims can still be productive despite heineous crime. By whose standards? Productive for who? I guess you would be satisfied if she is still able to report to work; but would she be equally satisfied? The idea that only rape which results in death deserves capital punishment puts undue emphasis on physical death, paying inadequate attention to lifelong damage on the victim and on the society of which she is a member.

 

You said my position that rape deserves capital punishment is emotional. In my view, there is nothing like an emotional argument, because an argument is composed of propositions rather than emotional expressions. You claim emotions are affecting my thinking: who can truly say their emotions do not affect their thinking? Would that not suggest two persons in one – an emotional one distinct from a rational one? I do not see the error in the argument as you have summed it up. You only think it is faulty because of your presumption that rape does not deserve capital punishment.

 

I am aware that many now find my position out of place, but I think this is due to the vigorous campaign against capital punishment both in the Western-dominated academia and media rather than due to the actual demerits of retaining Capital Punishment. Let the sober discussion continue!