Saturday, January 5, 2008

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold


Kibaki is in a tight corner. Peace can come temporarily, but if the electorate feels like Raila has been deceived, then the whole scenario plays out again. It’s a no-win situation, but unfortunately, blindness is a terrible disease, particularly when the blind insist that they can see .Kikuyus can only be comfortable, if Raila gets what he wants. What surprised me is the ease with which matters can escalate and assume monumental proportions especially if left unchecked. Kibaki cannot be serious that for five damn years he is willing to sacrifice the entire welfare of all Kikuyus. Was Kibaki unable to see the consequences of his actions, or is this exactly what he wanted, because he does not want to be held accountable for misdeeds in his government? whatever the outcome of the American peace initiatives, which always don't work as long as someone feels disenfranchised by the whole process ( look at Israeli/ Palestine for reference) , Kenya has been damaged thoroughly by the roughness with which Kibaki treated a delicate democracy handed over to him in 2002 by Mr. Daniel Arap Moi.
This reminds me of the classical poem by William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi"
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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