THE RETURN OF WANGU WA MAKERI: A PLAY

I know by the time you are through with this piece you may conclude that am the most dirty minded creature in the world, the most archaic, most inhuman, most uncivilized. I know you will pick any statement that can aptly describe insanity and place it on me. Yet I feel you will pick one or two positive ideas.

Let’s start from that time when anything was possible, an epoch back when the cosmos beautifully held the world intact. During that time in the land of Gikuyu and Mumbi as the narrative goes (or so we were told), women through an authoritarian hand of one woman chief Wangu wa Makeri made life unbearable for men.

Surprisingly Wangu herself had been appointed by a male chief. It would thus have been modest for her to return a favor or two to the male chief if not to the men folk. Instead she is said to have been so harsh to her men (subjects) even commanding them to kneel before her sometimes so she could have stools to rest her legs. Stools that Murungu himself created – of course am aware that there seems to be no clear story of the origin of the men Gikuyu picked for his nine girls at the legendary grove. If you think otherwise tell me: were they also created by him? If so were they also special like Nyambura and her sisters? And if so how come Murungu did not want to give them names also? 

Wangu was loved if not adored by women who saw her as their solution to the patriarchal system they had seen before. Men on the other hand abhorred her, and that’s why they planned to overthrow her government, and how I wish I got a chance to interview the man who had planned the coup. So bloodless and cheap was it that the team only required to convince their women to lie in bed with them, or maybe it was the women who demanded their men to have the act done. After all they were powerful. All the women conceived at the same time, including Wangu herself and the prime time for the men came when they slowly became heavy with their pregnancies. 

That’s how the Gikuyu’s daughters went back to the patriarchal system they had fought against a little while ago. That was in the 19^th C. We are now in the 21^st C and going by the look of things women may be conspiring to tame men, if the recent stories from Nyeri about women battering their husbands are anything to go by. 

Again I take note of the fact that the men in this case may have called for their beating for being irresponsible. The cheap liquor they take is said to be ‘responsible’ for the many woes the women go through up to and including lack of sexual satisfaction. 

I am however not calling your attention to this. I am writing to raise your attention to the fact that the modern man will have a bigger challenge to counter the rough hands with which his modern woman will handles him. At least it is clear the tactics his peers used in the 19^th C will not be applicable in the contemporary society. 

Look here, in the 19^th C the coup leader only thought of impregnating Wangu and her female folk and the trick was done. But tell me which woman will be impregnated in the modern world just for the sake of humbling her. Unlike the 19^th C woman the modern woman has more opportunities to avoid pregnancy. Worse still she may even dodge carrying the pregnancy to term evading any attempt to tame her through a conception. 

So what’s the best idea to have the woman still want the man? I mean sex is simply and squarely a tool of power and any gender can use it to their maximum satisfaction like the Agikuyu men of the 19^th C. Does the modern man have any chance to rescue his sorry state through the same tool, ceteris paribus, meaning holding constant all the facts that some men are merely skunk cry puppies who will rarely rise to any occasion?

I propose to have a situation where the woman is made to scratch herself at the most of her woman hood and only have her man as the only person who can cool the itch. Let the man use any theatrics but by all means let’s have him subdue her in the due course. Let’s also have the men use the very drinking sprees as the democratic spaces at which they will open up to themselves. Let one cry baby after another narrate how they have been made to suffer the insults of women before a sober one among them gives this idea. The psychoanalytic interpretation of this is a simple one; a solution lies within them for their trouble but that requires them to be sober up, first and foremost. 

About what stuff the men will use to cause the itchiness…mmmh…’am still thinking. May be you can give me an idea. Although a time back I felt of having them apply a fine powder of stinging nettles on the under garments of the women (for down there), I feel afraid this may be too chastising.

See how I have created a play out of this? Do you also see that I have already presented you the play? 

Thank you so much then for attending the show. As long as you are reading this for the first time, then this is your premier show. I hope you enjoyed the cast and the whole rendition. 

‘Till we meet again for another show, you have been watching THE RETURN OF WANGU WA MAKERI, a play by Kioko wa Kivandi.

Media and The Politics of Identity

The politics of identity concerns the question of how we define our-selves and other-selves. Its ideology is a guide on deciding how we see the I and the other. Such a road map is critical when reflecting on the larger question of what a national identity is. Perhaps then, we need note the structure of a national consciousness is always anchored on it besides influencing the operations of the images we call media personalities the world over.

So powerful is identity politics that the whole world is run on it simply because all our interactions are based on how we perceive those we rub shoulders with, i.e. how we identify them – consciously or unconsciously. But on the other hand all our identities are based on dichotomies which are dangerously inseparable, a fact which does not exclude the media institution.

While at this we need to consider every media product (news bulletin, feature, program etc) as an analysis of society and that it’s only better to see such as a text or a work of art at its best.

Let us also appreciate the annoying truth of a poor reading culture of the society we live in, a disadvantage which the media has exploited to the maximum, making sure every time information resources are stack in a consumption basket those with their labels top the scale of preference.

Thus, out of the stiff competition of the later days everyone in media seems to be concerned with scaling up their game so as to get award winning ‘novellas’ if not ‘short stories’ to replace the aroma of what was once the task of local writers.

With this analogy of media products and art, we borrow from Ngugi wa Thiong’o on his idea of the interestedness of art when he said in Writers in Politics that literature (art) is a product of “the conscious acts of men in society,” to mean there can never be objectivity in writing – at least on an absolute scale – even if one is writing for the most democratic institution or is living in the most open society since the days of Adam and Eve.

Every writer, arguably, subjects his readers to accept his ideologies which are carefully crafted to represent the wishes of the group (read class) he belongs to at a given point in time. Note that in all this the media is not spared.

Going back to the dichotomies we realize that the media has a superior identity, justified by another identity which is inferior to it. It happens that this inferior identity is its audience which it manipulates with its ideas, though without any attempt to classify it whatsoever.

So the audience is clamped in a block of passive consumers suffering from the information fatigue syndrome – the unwillingness to probe further in to media content on the part of the consumers (read audience). Because of this the media have the courage to comment on everything including making a caricature of even the most powerful personalities in our societies since as it is when you have reduced someone you can cut their coat according to your pair of scissors and the availability of material.

At the individual level every media personality is an autonomous identity. It takes time to construct a personality to a level of a great opinion shaper. But once that level is reached the personality is transformed into a ‘god’, and becomes expensive for it to be hired and complicated to be fired.

A word from such an identity is powerful and can influence the masses with the speed of a cyclone. This explains why some of the powerful media personalities/identities are on record as having ‘announced’ anarchy in their countries. Callers will always jam phones during their on-air sessions in a bid to identify with them (a case of an inferior image getting power from a superior one). This is done in an attempt by the inferior callers to construct their ego and satisfy an unconscious desire of holding power in their hands if only in one second. It’s the best explanation of a craving for an identity.

In a nut shell politics of identity depicts what we are and what we eventually do as media personalities. It shapes our perception on how we see the world, yet most of the time we see it as automatic that media represents the right to information. We forget that media players are vulnerable to subjectivities, racism, utopianism, essentialism, poetic patriarchy and any other ideology which affects the ordinary man.

When we consume media products we unconsciously become part of those ideologies perpetuated by the media identities, now that we are fatigued by information and can’t question the ‘status quo’.