The Kenyan peoples, and I use the plural term deliberately since we aren’t one people, sometimes exhibit odious conduct. What’s shocking is that some of that despicable conduct has no purpose, and doesn’t achieve any goal worth the name. Take, for example, the conduct of people at huge political events such as political rallies, or large political party meetings.
Often, the events start, or end, with stampedes of hordes of humanity. You’d think you are at the “running of the bulls” in Spain. Or random people simply coming up to you and demanding your cell phone number. Absolutely terrible. But the boda attack – and molestation – of a female motorist a couple of weeks back was Kenya’s nadir.
Every time one of those savage gender-based attacks are reported on TV, I walk away from the set. I simply can’t take the violence. It’s akin to the racist cop’s knee on George Floyd in Minneapolis. I can’t watch it. Too traumatising.
What’s utterly unbelievable is the lust with which the attackers ply their savagery. With their eyes bulging, emitting terrible breath, and sweating copiously, the “animals” scream as they plunder their prey.
Even animals in the wild are more civilised. One of the root causes of gender-based violence – because rape of any kind is violence, not sex – is deep-rooted cultural misogyny. Hatred for women. No boy, or man, would breathe the good oxygen we inhale were it not for a woman – his mother. Our mothers, who are women (hello!) carried us for at least eight months in their bellies at great discomfort to themselves.
They took care not to do anything that would compromise our health. Then, at great pain, they delivered us. I’ve always thought that if I had to give birth, the thought itself would simply kill me. I would literally die right there and then.
And if I didn’t die, I would hate whatever I produced at such great pain. But yet our mothers love and nurture us – until we are old enough to curse, or talk back, at them.
Attack on female motorist
What were our fathers doing while mama was carrying us in her womb, or suckling us to strength?
Your dad was probably in a beer hall cavorting with another woman, and then staggering home smelly and inebriated. That’s the textbook definition of a deadbeat. But it’s not to the males that we turn our gender-based ire and hate. It’s towards the female gender.
We must be sick – very sick – in the noggin. I’ve read of boys and men groping women in matatus and other forms of public transport.
Others, to their credit, batter the crap out of the creeps with their handbags.
The attack on the female motorist by the boda boda men – and the attackers were all men – revealed a sinister and sick underbelly of the Kenyan man.
The marauding “hyenas” encircled her, beat and stripped her naked, put their dirty fingers and hands on her, and did every despicable thing you could imagine. The docile public stood there, complicit, paralyzed. Shame on them.
Those who stood by and did nothing attacked her by their inaction. The episode proved how depraved our society is.
I don’t think this is the problem of a few bad apples. It’s a cultural problem. And it’s not just among the boda boda. It’s a societal madness. It’s like corruption. Deep in the bone marrow.
The attack on the female motorist is behaviour that’s taught and learned. Right from the home. It’s then affirmed in our schools, work spaces, and private as well as public joints like bars, restaurants, and public transportation. At the root of it is the social belief that a woman is a “thing”, not a full human. A thing for the use and pleasure of the man like chattel.
Women are supposed to cook, clean and care for us. In a word, slave for us. They exist to serve us. That’s the belief structure at the core of the attack on the female motorist by the boda boda. We teach boys to be masters and girls to be servants.
Don’t allow the division of labour by gender. If the boy eats, he must cook, just like the girl.
If he defecates, he must clean the toilet, just like the girl.
Apply that rule all the way through school. Have zero tolerance for sexist talk or unwanted touching in public or private spaces.
Duncan Kung’u, my colleague at the Kenya Human Rights Commission, suggested Azimio leaders urge the state to form a Boda Boda Motorbike Police Unit solely dedicated to bringing sanity to the Boda Boda industry, an integral part of the economy.
Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School. He’s Chair of KHRC. @makaumutua.
