Other than Biblical Scripture, it is only Literature that can afford you penultimate solutions to all the Visitations attendant to the very tragedy of Human Existence. Yes; Visitations is the adjective the good book selects for the ten Plagues that God (Yahweh) let loose on the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt during those heady days of Moses.
And such is why, one can only defer to the wisdoms, picked from the greatest Literature-in attempting a prognosis to what is certainly gnawing the minds and hearts of many concerned Kenyans: the ICC confirmations and its unfolding; dramatic aftermath.
In the classic Russian novel, the writer Fydor Dostoyevsky dealt at length with the issue of ‘Crime and Punishment’, also the title to one of his most celebrated works. The abiding lesson therein is that, Penal Servitude (or Punishment through established legal processes) is absolutely nothing compared to the punishment endured in the Human Conscience. If, indeed people can commit heinous crimes and yet for some reason, the long arm of the Law fails to catch up with them, you can rest assured that they suffer eternally and painfully, to the very last days of their lives!
On this philosophical pedestal, you must, thus believe, that the people who committed those most heinous Post-Election crimes in Kenya have suffered enough and they will never be free, till ‘world without end.’ Yes, their ‘innocence’ is simply a pointless, legal oxymoron; we really need not do anything more about it. Real life is about our minds and hearts. And if this be the self-evident truth, then the best solution is for ‘the Guilty’ (since they know themselves-anyway) to consider ( of their own free volition) to repent; to seek forgiveness: such is the only way to be truly cleansed and in the words of later philosophers like Frantz Fanon, be cleansed of the violence.
The sheer legalese about ‘Innocence’ or ‘Guilt’ has been shown to be “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing”; since, anyway, “life, is but a walking shadow”: if these lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth mean anything to YOU Kenyans. Such is the message we see through Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov-the lead character who kills the miserly old lady, his very land lord, but somehow escapes being caught by the prevailing legal regime. The eternal triumph of goodness; or justice over evil remains a purifying and powerful sermon in the classical tragedies, all through to our reverence of the great William Shakespeare.
And for those only familiar with Kenyan reflections on this subject, you may want to [re-] read Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s, A Grain of Wheat. That novel offers a crucial glimpse into the hearts and minds of suffering Mugo; the real devil that betrayed our true independence heroes, yet all along, presumed to be the Hero; deified and nearly worshipped. Actually, through it all, no human law ever catches up with Mugo. Yet, it is not until he confesses that he is indeed, the Traitor who betrayed Kihika (read Dedan Kimathi) that “the burden of all those years is lifted off his shoulders.”
There is no doubt that in Kenya today, exists dozens of more heinous post -election violence offenders, walking scot free; people who committed un-imaginable, ‘anti-human’ crimes. Forget the ‘Ocampo 6 or 4’ and think for a moment: the one certain thing is that there are those really big–time murderers and rapists who are truly bleeding internally, yet presumed innocent. That’s how banal (or foolish) the Law can be.
Yes, there is some room even in a tortured landscape such as ours, for what Aristotle long-identified as Catharsis; the purifying of emotions, only possible through the power of Tragedy. And the quick moral of this short piece is that those found culpable by the ubiquitous ICC process do have a much more superior and powerful; even, truly humane chance to seek everlasting peace with the country and with themselves: the Catharsis of self redemption through repentance and forgiveness; but above all: our sheer willingness to forget and to move on as one nation.
*Dr Outa, Works as ‘Communications Advisor’ in the Office of the Prime Minister and expresses the views herein in a personal capacity.
86
