Popular Culture and Politics: Whispers and the ‘Dramaturgy of Power’ in Kenya

Abstract

Popular culture has become one of the most visible sites of critical social and political interpretation in post-colonial Africa. It is a site where an alternative public space is created and where various discourses; social, economic and political are invariably debated and negotiated. In many ways its various forms reflect, other times allegorize, fundamental transformation in society. In Kenya, a weekly newspaper column, Whispers, written by one of the country's most prolific fiction writers Wahome Mutahi, became arguably the most visible site of social, cultural and political expression for the last two decades, at a time when freedom to such expression was highly constrained by the state. The column echoed life in Kenya in all its banality but also in its distinctiveness. It interrogated a range of issues but most profoundly, the ‘performance of power’ in the country. Drawing from a pool of cultural resources and various forms of social and political culture, Whispers made legible the ambiguous interactions of ‘political performance’ in Kenya, how the subject population and the polity are all actors in a contradictory carnival of ‘mutual zombification’ which is at once empowering and disempowering. This paper engages with how fiction lays bare the intricacies of ‘political performance’ in the African postcolony using Kenya as a case study.

Introduction

In his seminal Politics and Popular Culture (1997), John Street observes that the relationship between politics and popular culture is not just about the former ‘reflecting’ or ‘causing’ the latter. Street contends that popular culture does not make people think and act in particular ways—which is not to deny popular culture political agency. Street cautions that posing the debate in a manner that ‘looks for cause and effect’ may not be particularly useful. He argues that popular culture

neither manipulates nor mirrors us … [w]e are not compelled to imitate it, any more than it has to imitate us. Instead, we live through and with it. (Street, 1997, p. 4)

Borrowing from Street, this paper examines the relationship between popular culture and politics in Kenya through the lens of a newspaper column Whispers. Drawing on recent theories of the postcolonial state, the paper reflects on how the political, or more appropriately how the ‘dramaturgy of power’1 is enacted in fiction. To paraphrase Street (1997), I am interested in the way in which popular fiction becomes—through the uses to which it is put and through judgments made of it—a form of political practice.

Whispers: A Brief Background

The paper focuses on one of Kenya's oldest popular fiction columns, Whispers, published in the local newspapers since 1983 and written by Wahome Mutahi, a leading Kenyan writer. Until Mutahi's untimely death in July 2003, Whispers had been the main feature in two Kenyan Sunday newspapers, the Nation and the Standard for over a decade.2 In its early years Whispers was modelled on the ‘market literature tradition’ revolving mainly around stock mannerisms, discussing life in the city (Nairobi).3 In the late 1980s however, following systematic political repression in Kenya, the column took on a more political colouring. This period constituted one of the most brutal epochs in Kenya's post-independence history. State repression saw several writers, intellectuals and politicians forcibly exiled and others incarcerated. Mutahi himself had personal experience of this repression. He was arrested on charges related to an underground political organisation Mwakenya and subsequently jailed for 15 months, an experience he later ‘fictionalised’ in his novel Jail Bugs.

In a situation where the state had all but monopolized political space, alternative social, cultural and political expression outside its purview was barely tolerated. Fiction columns published in the popular press provided one small avenue of expression. According to Benson Riungu, a journalist who has written a number of these columns, the ‘public does relate to this kind of fiction especially if it is informed by issues and experiences they can relate to’ (e-mail to the author, July 17, 2004). Through popular fiction, the Kenyan mainstream newspapers provided a forum where contentious issues could be confronted without generating the official fear and hostility that other sub-genres such as ‘news’ or ‘editorial pieces’ attract. As Britten (1988) observes, ‘in the parallel universe of fiction, we can laugh at some of these issues that easily provoke anger, angst and frustrations in the real world … ’ (p. 30). Popular texts, Barber (1997a) similarly argues, can ‘collaborate with, adapt to or evade the intermittent demands of the state while retaining the capacity to formulate devastating criticism’ (p. 5).

The major characters in the column Whispers comprise a family made up of the eponymous character Whispers (also known as Son of the Soil), his wife Thatcher, their two children ‘The Investment’ and Whispers Jr, as well as a horde of transient characters who include Teacher Damiano, Father Camissasius, Appepklonia, Rhoda, Aunt Kezia and Uncle Jethro. It is however through the character Whispers that much of the column's concerns are discussed. Whispers is a semi-urban Kenyan man trying to make a living in Nairobi. He is one of the millions of rural migrants in Nairobi who now call the city home. But he is not ‘weaned’ of his village upbringing yet. Using the allegorical form of a journey, we see this character move back and forth between the village and the city both physically and psychologically, what Mbugua wa Mungai (forthcoming) has called the ‘the cultural and spatial crossings of the postcolonial Kenyan subject’. Through his journeys we are exposed to the existential dilemmas of this subject.

The Nature of Political Power in Post-colonial Kenya

Scott (1990) has noted that

rulers who aspire to hegemony in the Gramscian sense of that term must make an ideological case that they rule, to some degree, on behalf of their subjects.

He explains that although this claim in turn ‘is always tendentious’, it is ‘seldom completely without resonance among subordinates’ (p. 18). Providing a similar argument are Michael Schatzberg and Mamadou Diouf who note that in ‘Middle Africa’, state-sanctioned ideological myths and imagery are crucial in the performance of power. These myths and imagery help in the ‘invention of traditions’ and in legitimizing domination. Diouf (2003) reminds us that political hegemony in Africa is characterized by various colonial and post-colonial fictions and fables. These entail a range of state-sanctioned and state-invented ideological myths, motifs, histories, memories and imagery but which find resonance within subject populations. Through various ‘modalities of management’, the state ‘manipulates and continuously reinvents this range of traditions … ’ (Diouf, cited in Young, 2003, p. 141).

In Kenya, especially in the first and second republics, state ideologies, myths, histories, memories, motifs and imagery were continuously (re)invented and manipulated as important instruments in the performance of power. Although often variously consumed, they were employed by various actors both within and without the state to define social and political relationships. Among the most persistent in this range of constructions was the (il)legitimacy of paternal systems of authority, drawn directly from the family and the various ‘ideologies of development’ such as Kenyatta's ‘Harambee’ (working together) and Moi's famous motto of ‘Peace, Love and Unity’.

The paternal construction of authority was a common feature during the Kenyatta and the Moi presidencies in Kenya. The colonial period was significant in the diffusion of this imagery. The Church played an important role, being the colonial state's premier ideological apparatus and thus having had almost absolute control of the school system (Schatzberg, 1988). One task of the Church was to inculcate respect for authority. The Native was taught he was not an equal even when he became a convert. He was a little more than an overgrown child. Ali Mazrui notes,

The ritualistic language of Christianity in terms of ‘children of God’, and the whole symbolism of fatherhood in the organizational structure of the Catholic Church all the way from the concept of the ‘Pope’ to the rank of ‘Father’ among some priests took an additional significance in African conditions. The metaphor of fatherhood within the Catholic hierarchy reinforced filial tendencies among African converts. Again the repercussions went beyond the particular members of that denomination, and reinforced the dependency complex in the society as a whole. (1975, p. 80)

At independence, Jomo Kenyatta, like Mobutu Ssese Seko in Zaire, emphasized the validity of this metaphor of a united family with the father as head. Kenyatta was referred to as Baba wa Taifa (Father of the Nation).4 But it is Moi's case that is especially informative in my reading. Like Kenyatta, Moi too became Baba wa Taifa. As ‘Father of the Nation’, Moi had to assume the title Mzee, in Kiswahili meaning ‘the old wise man’ and used to show respect. But this title is also significant in structuring relationships in Kenya. Moi, a fairly youthful politician in 1978 when he came to power following Kenyatta's death soon became Mzee, in effect fabricating and legitimizing his ‘wisdom’ despite his youthful age. As Baba wa Taifa, Mzee Moi was able to rule over ‘his children’.

As Aguilar (1998) would say, possible alternatives to leadership were swept aside through the invocation of (African) traditions that upheld rules of deference and submission between social and generational juniors and seniors. But Moi went further than just being Baba wa Taifa. When his party, the Kenyan African National Union (Kanu), adopted the same familial metaphors and became Baba na Mama (Father and Mother), Moi assumed the same titles. He was the patriarch and matriarch all in one. He became the virtual provider. It was to be the apogee of his political domination and repression. Moi, like a number of other African leaders such as Mobutu Ssese Seko, Kamuzu Banda and Ahamadou Ahidjo among others, having failed his subjects had to qualify his domination. Crucially, he added yet another title to his repertoire. He became Mtukufu (His Eminence) Rais (President) Mzee Daniel Arap Moi. His stature was now to be seen as messianic. He was Moi the messiah, Moi the president of the republic and of course Moi the elder. As messiah, Moi was ageless. The idiom of age was pushed to vulgar extremes to legitimate domination.

Underlying this appropriation was a realignment between age and gerontocracy in Kenya. The normal assumption would be that gerontocractic authority depends on actual age. However, to create a perception of a Mzee despite one's biological age is to manipulate the title and its ‘appurtenances’. The image of Mzee therefore naturally generates a hierarchy and legitimizes domination, which is not only politically sanctioned but also culturally legitimate. Those who are not Wazee especially in the political arena are children in the presence of a Mzee. Even when biologically older, they are obliged to do as they are told. The post-colonial leadership in much of Africa especially at independence had (re)invented the myth of a gerontocratic leadership as the only legitimate kind.

The transference and affirmation of the legitimacy of gerontocratic leadership also includes the adoption of other ‘accessories of power’. Kenyatta and Moi like other Wazee physically ‘performed their titles’, Kenyatta with the flywhisk and Moi with the rungu (club). These objects are symbols of traditional authority and are the focus of numerous popular legends which impute almost fetish-like power to them. To be hit with any of these objects was to suffer a great curse.

Another interesting addition to Moi's stock of political imagery is the symbol Jogoo (rooster). Jogoo was the party symbol of the ruling party Kanu, although it was constantly used to refer to Moi. Just as the rooster crows and lords over other chicken, so was Moi supposed to rule over the country. Once again, through this symbol, Moi portrayed himself as the benevolent father who knew how and when to crow, and what was best for his ‘children’. The state adopted the paternal imagery in a manner that seems to suggest that the head is male and old and therefore revered. Through these myths, the political leadership attempts to saturate the public space with its presence and to legitimate its domination in the form of a fetish, as Mbembe would have it.

In attempting to understand how the column Whispers depicts these processes, we cannot of course simply assume that the column ‘reflects’ a prior set of circumstances. Instead as other analyses of popular culture in Africa suggest, cultural forms ‘make the ambiguous networks and trajectories of the postcolonial state legible’ (Hofmeyr, 2004, p. 134). Let us examine how Whispers undertakes this task.

Ironizing State Performances

In an evocative article titled ‘The antics of the next “Big man”’, Mutahi reproduces the state's symbols but demonstrates how they are ironicized by subject populations. Narrating the ‘performance’ that is orchestrated whenever the president arrives at public functions, Whispers takes the place of the president.

I have called one Emoite Opotti [a minor character in the column and sidekick of Whispers] back from retirement and he is telling the world how wise I am. He is saying: Mtukufu Rais Papa Whis, the very muthoniwa [translation: His Excellency the President Father Whispers] is scheduled to arrive any time now. Hapa kuna vifijo na nderemo [translation: Here there is great applause] awaiting the arrival of His Excellency Papa Whis. As usual, atakuwa amevalia ile suti yake ya rangi ya udhurungi na ua nyekundu [translation: As usual he will be dressed in his Argyria (blueish-black) coloured suit with red flowers]. His Excellency will be received with thunderous applause by the thousands and thousands of Kenyans who are gathered here. Our beloved president is addressing his first rally after his official visit to the People's Republic of Kyrgystan. (Sunday Nation, February 17, 2002)

Apart from the name Whis, the rest of the ‘performance’ is very much a part of the language of Moi's presidential press service. In fact the ‘ritual’ could have been reproduced almost verbatim from official reports. Yet it becomes obvious that the very metaphors of the state here are being used to ironicize power. In a more obvious vein, part of the article also reads.

Opotti is saying, Naona msafara wa [translation: I can see the convoy of] Mtukufu Rais Papa Whisi [His Excellency the President Whispers] approaching. Yes, the beloved father of the nation, the Taliban of Talibans, is about to arrive. Parararaparaa! Paraparaa! Mtukufu Papa Whisi ndiye huyo. Ndiye … ’ [there comes the president … applause!] (Sunday Nation, February 17, 2002)

The ritualistic language of the public ‘performance’ is appropriated here by the ordinary populace. Mutahi both reveals such practices of complicity while unmasking such performances as camouflaging repression. Another example focuses on the symbolism of jogoo, the cock.

I think you have an idea that there is some sort of multi-party democracy in my house, which came not because I did not want to remain the only jogoo in my house but since there was too much pressure on me to introduce it [multi-party democracy]. The democracy in my house came about because the internal forces led by my Thatcher demanded it. She was joined in the effort by all the people: Whispers Jr, the same fellow who was swearing before that he is dadi damu 5 and that his loyalty to me was total and direct. The Investment alias Pajero did not require much to join Thatcher in demanding for democracy in the house. The external forces were led by members of the ‘Sect of many waters’ of which Thatcher is a life member. They are the same people who don't believe in secret weapons. Instead they choose a loud weapon called drums which they insist on beating when my head is feeling like a war drum itself on account of having too many at the right temperatures at Rhoda's place. (Sunday Standard, November 15, 1992).

The excerpt is a reading of the introduction of multi-party politics in Kenya and counters a major official narrative, namely that Moi's regime voluntary permitted a transition to political pluralism. The narrator argues, rather insists, that Moi was coerced into accepting political pluralism in Kenya. He observes that Moi capitulated to national and international pressure, reconstructed in the article as ‘internal and external forces’ and should therefore not present himself as the benevolent father, or jogoo. Narrated as a family feud, the national or internal forces are represented by Thatcher, The Investment and Whispers Jr who have apparently ganged up against Whispers. They are said to be working in cahoots with ‘external forces’ notably ‘members of the Sect of Many Waters’ to be read in the figurative sense as representing the Church as well as the international community.

By pointing out that political pluralism was forced onto a recalcitrant government, the narrator implicitly dismisses attempts to legitimize notions of pious benevolence of the father. More important though is the use of the symbol jogoo. Appropriating the symbol of the cock, Whispers (jogoo) initially monopolizes the ‘crowing’ in his house. However, he soon capitulates to pressure, ‘ … I did not want to remain the only jogoo in my house but since there was too much pressure on me to introduce it … ’. Note also that in this particular case, the paternal logic of the father as provider is shown to have failed since, as the rest of the column makes clear, the jogoo actually fails to crow. The leader has failed his people and has hence failed as ‘father’. The relationship lacks reciprocity since one can only be a father if one is able to provide for one's children.

Shatzberg's notion of the ‘moral matrix’ of being a father becomes apposite here. A father must provide for his children6 otherwise one becomes an emasculated father, a Kamzee (the prefix Ka is borrowed from the Kiswahili language and literally means small). Mzee is Kiswahili for old man so that a Kamzee refers to ‘a small old man’, an emasculated elder. Subject populations may, and indeed do buy into these myths. However, in doing so, they have particular expectations and use the moral matrix as a set of discourses through which demands can be made.

In many of his columns, then, Mutahi deploys the ‘moral matrix’ of the family as a mode of analysing patrimonial state power. This focus on the family as a political nexus is not surprising. McClintock (1995) has pointed to the allegorical potential that inheres in linking the family and the nation. She notes that nations are ‘symbolically figured as domestic genealogies’ and that the ‘nation’ is frequently figured through the iconography of familial and domestic spaces. Indeed, she notes that ‘nation’ is derived from natio which means ‘to be born’ (p. 357).

Mutahi exploits this allegorical potential. From 1992–95, Whispers frequently addressed the theme of Kenya's transitional politics. As Moi came under increasing pressure to reform, a politics of ever-shifting alliances, coalitions, defections and co-operations took shape as political players manoeuvred to position themselves in the changing political landscape. However, it soon became evident that this manoeuvring was less about political reform than class-based political dealings.

Whispers took up the theme of this ‘co-operation’ as an alliance of convenience among the elite. In several stories, Mutahi revises the key terms in the discourse of co-operation and alliance by recasting them in the family space. Alliances are struck between man and wife at the expense of their children or between daughter and mother at the expense of the father. The stories are written as normal domestic feuds but they enact betrayal at the national level. Being able to muster an ethnic constituency (the Luo), Raila Odinga then leader of the National Development Party was an important player in the schemes by Kanu to maintain its grip on power. Similarly, for the NDP, ‘co-operation’ with Kanu would provide it access to power and state resources. Mutahi's views are in line with Lonsdale's (1981) argument that politicians see the state itself as a resource and that ‘ready access to state institutions is literally what makes classes dominant’. Sklar (1979) has equally argued that

shrewd rulers will seek to ally the class interests of potential ethnic mobilizers to their own by granting them access to the state, thus decapitating and demobilizing potential ethnic trouble spots. (cited in Schatzberg, 1988, p. 23)

By treating the family as a nation writ small, Mutahi can lay bare the moral matrices of the neo-patrimonial state and the ways in which these yoke together ruler and subject in complex networks of ambiguity.

This popular participation in the performances of the state is taken up elsewhere. In one story Mutahi ‘gives’ former president Moi's chosen heir Uhuru Kenyatta (son of Jomo Kenyatta), a man in his mid-forties, these titles of state. For instance, he refers to Uhuru as Mzee. In an example entitled ‘My role in the court of Jomo's son’ where he imagines Uhuru as president with access to the ‘comfort’ of the state machinery, Mutahi tells of how ‘one J.J. Kamotho’, famously known in the column as ‘Kathuku’ (Kikuyu for parrot) will be addressing Uhuru as President. In the article, Mutahi parodies one of Moi's most loyal followers Joseph Kamotho and Secretary-General of the party Kanu. Kamotho was traditionally known as the Moi's ‘praise singer’, a staunch supporter of Moi and the party Kanu. Readers receive their cues from his strong ethnic Kikuyu accent. For instance, he often confused the syllables ‘ba’ and ‘mba.’

Uhuru Bamba, hata wakati ulikuwa mtoto, baba. Wakati nilijuwa natembelea bamba yako bamba, nilinjua Mungu alikuwa amekuamua bamba, ukuwe mtukufu bamba. (Sunday Nation, August 11, 2002)

[Uhuru father, even when you were a child, father. When I visited your father, father, I knew God had decided father, that you be the president, father.]

The excerpt demonstrates how the metaphors of the state are taken up by the ordinary populace and hence how these invented traditions are reproduced by subject populations. As Mbembe (1992) explains,

people whose identities have been partly confiscated have been able, precisely because there was this pretence, to glue back together the bits and pieces of their fragmented identities. By taking over the signs and language of officialdom, people have been able to remythologize their own conceptual universe … (p. 10)

Mbembe has nonetheless argued that the process of ‘remythologizing’ does not in any way

increase people's subordination or their levels of resistance; it simply produces a situation of disempowerment (impouvoir) for both the ruled and the rulers. The process is fundamentally magical: although it may demystify the commandement 7 or even erode its legitimacy, it does not do violence to the commandement's base. At best, it creates pockets of indiscipline on which the commandement may stub its toe, though otherwise it glides unperturbed over them. (p. 10)

That may be true, but as I noted earlier, our concern is whether there is a sense of critical consciousness perceptible in these relationships. Remythologizing the state's language may or may not perturb the commandement but it is a critique nonetheless. One would also want to refer to Mbembe's (1992) argument about the masses joining in the madness and clothing themselves in

cheap imitations of power to reproduce its epistemology … the power in its own violent quest for grandeur mak[ing] vulgarity and wrongdoing its main mode of existence. (p. 29)

It is a spectacle quite evident in the examples above. But I want to argue that as the examples above demonstrate, by engaging in the ‘presidential carnival’ the subject population does not necessarily endorse this spectacle. On the contrary, it is a critique of its absurdity.

Politics of the Belly

In the story of the ‘Rigging master: When it's hard to play fair game’, Mutahi once again critiques the political polity through a deceptively simplistic story. The story enacts how the incumbent government maintains its grip on power through fraudulent elections. The story describes the possibility of Kanu and Moi orchestrating a sham election. In the story, Mutahi draws on a hilarious ‘youthful experience’ of his main character about how Whispers and his friends rigged football matches in their favour by over-feeding their opponents. Part of the article reads:

They cleared [the food] as fast as locusts eating through a field of wheat and soon they were asking for water … Pretty soon the members of the visiting team would have given the meals for the next two days just to get a drop of water. (Sunday Standard, December 20, 1992)

Through this story, Mutahi enacts the ‘politics of consumption’ in Kenya. The story is not so much about football games and locusts as it is about voters and opposition politicians giving in to the allure of the belly. The writer dramatizes the legacy of consumption in Kenya, echoing Bayart's (1983) ideas about the ‘politics of the belly’, that in fact,

contrary to the popular image of the innocent masses, corruption and predatoriness are not found exclusively among the powerful. Rather, they are modes of social and political behaviour shared by a plurality of actors on more or less a great scale. (p. 238)

But it also demonstrates the ‘patron-client’ relationship in which the centre monopolises the largesse of the state. This in turn perpetuates a culture of political patronage.

The ‘Mheshimiwa [Kiswahili for a respected person, often a title used to refer to politicians, but then sometimes very disparagingly] culture of eating’ which is not merely a title but a summation of political practice in Kenya, further emphasizes this point. It hints at the predatory tendencies of the politician, how the state, and how elective politics opens up the doors to ‘eating’. But it is also a reminder of how loyalty is commoditized, advertized and bought in to the political marketplace. In one of the columns, the writer enacts this culture of ‘eating’ and patronage:

… I have discovered that indeed they [perceived enemies] want to finish me totally using both open and secret weapons and if I don't do something my toughness in the house will be no more by the time that a child will be born in Bethlehem, that is this Christmas. I don't know how I will survive when even my aunt Kezia has joined forces with those who want Son of the Soil out. The same lady who has been benefiting from my wallet in the form of sugar, tea leaves and Kimbo gifts whenever I go home has joined Operation Whis Out (OWO). (Sunday Standard, November 15, 1992)

He continues:

… What worries me are the domestic forces since they are the ones spreading the propaganda about me including that I have ruined the domestic economy by not just looting the kitchen budget but by also having foreign accounts in Rhoda's place. (ibid.)

Mapped against the political process in the 1990s, the author is satirically indicting the polity for ruining the economy by looting the country's coffers and transferring money to offshore accounts. In the article, this looting of the country is figuratively narrated as Whispers looting the ‘kitchen budget’. The writer reminds his readers that members of the Moi government have foreign accounts where they siphon away money that belongs to the state. An equally important narrative in the example is how the dominant classes create clients through ‘gifts’ and promises and how subject populations equally feed this culture of patronage.

Rumour and Gossip

As its title Whispers implies, the column becomes a form of political practice in its appropriation of rumour and gossip. Rumour and gossip constitute important ‘hidden transcripts’ and are extensively utilized in the column. They are as Scott (1990) notes ‘forms of protest which dare not speak in their own name’ (p. 141). Scott notes that gossip represents a relatively ‘safe social sanction’. He further notes that gossip normally has no identifiable author, ‘but scores of eager retailers who can claim that they are just passing on news’ (p. 142). Gossip, Scott observes, is

a discourse about social rules that have been violated … [w]ithout an accepted normative standard from which degrees of deviation may be estimated, the notion of gossip would make no sense whatever. Gossip in turn reinforces these normative standards by invoking them and by teaching anyone who gossips precisely what kinds of conduct are likely to be mocked or despised. (1990, pp. 142–43)

In a society where free speech is muzzled either by force or through indirect control of public channels of communication, rumour is another transcript that becomes a safety valve and a popular form of disseminating information. As a site that provides space for group problem solving, a public is easily constituted around a rumour. Ramotsu Shibutani argues that rumour develops as

people caught together in an ambiguous situation attempt to construct meaningful interpretation … by pooling their intellectual resources. (cited in Rosnow & Fine, 1976, p. 97)

Usually, the presence of leaders and other higher status individuals helps build publics around rumour. Rumours are also juxtaposed with hard news, a strategy which Rosnow and Fine argue is used to give rumour ‘credibility by association’ (1976, p. 97). By introducing potentially subversive topics as rumour, the writer also engages in what Czeslaw Misolv calls the ‘art of dissimulation’ (cited in Ruganda, 1992, p. 43). This is a strategy that involves a constant and universal masquerade and helps the writer ‘appear conformist and dissentious at once, to be seen as applauding when they are condemning’ (Ruganda, 1995, p. 43). Scott argues that as a rumour travels, ‘it is altered in a fashion that brings it more closely into line with the hopes, fears and worldview of those who hear it and retell it’. Quoting Gordin Allport and Leo Postman, Scott argues that deletions and additions are added to fit the ‘general gestalt of the messengers’ (1990, p. 145).

In Kenya, rumour takes a very specific political role. Haugerud (1996) and Atieno-Odhiambo (1987) have separately discussed how Kanu actually turned the rhetoric against ‘rumour mongering’ into a political campaign tool to discredit its political opponents who were then denied political agency with labels such as ‘rumour mongers’, ‘enemies of development’ or as ‘Mwakenya [an outlawed political movement] activists’. But it is this that made the rumour mill credible hence rumour turning out to be a reliable means of expression. In his collection of essays How to be a Kenyan, Mutahi describes how rumours spread in Kenya.

Kenya is a land of ‘true’ rumours and of fertile imagination. It is also a land where despite the arrival of the satellite, the bush telegraph sometimes works more effectively than the mass media … By the time what started as a rumour is published, it will have been refurbished so many times that it will have no resemblance to what has been passed on by the rumour mills. (Mutahi, 1996, p. 55)

Mutahi relies extensively on rumour and succeeds in distancing himself from the issues under discussion and therefore escapes possible reprisal. But he also exploits the fact that rumour resists narrative closure. He writes:

Over the last month, Kenyans have become very economical with the truth … They belong to the species of humankind (not mankind) called Homo Rumapithecus that peddles merchandise called rumours. One characteristic of Homo Rumapithecus is to possess lips that tremble uncontrollably when he finds two or three Kenyans gathered. Of course you can be sure that when two of three Kenyans are gathered, the subject is not prayer. They are most likely talking opposition politics … This is what I heard such a Homo Rumapithecus say every morning in December. ‘Don't say I told you this, but God is not a fool. Why else do you think he has sent the El Nino towards our direction if not to sweep Daniel from his seat in State House?’ … At that point he looks right and then left as if he is looking for Congo and says; ‘That cousin of my aunt's husband has come with the news that the man from Sacho will head for Congo to seek exile … ’ (Sunday Nation, January 11, 1998)

Political issues are introduced as rumours. The rumours seek to explain certain anxieties especially with regard to the secrecy surrounding President Daniel Moi possible exile. Without official explanations of Moi's plans following what appeared to be his imminent defeat in the upcoming national elections, through rumours people attempted to find for themselves the answers to their questions, to their hopes and fears.

Conclusion

Whispers can be understood as constituting a critical political forum from within and ‘without the text’. How might this politics work? In answering this question, the temptation is to interpret such texts simply as instances of resistance and opposition. However, such hydraulic models of domination and resistance have been under critique for several decades now (Mbembe). Much of this critique has emerged from discussions which demonstrate that dichotomized views of the state (ruler/ruled; high/low etc.) cannot capture the complexity of political power which depends on a series of personalized, neo-patrimonial networks that links government and governed in relations of asymmetrical dependence (Chabal & Daloze, 1999). As studies like Haugerud suggest, such links are often enacted or made real in sites of public performance replete with the dramaturgy of power. As Hofmeyr indicates in her analysis of post-resistance perspectives on popular culture, such public performances pivot around ambiguity, they are

like mazes which allow for posturing, positioning and political play, underlining, and reminding us of Mbembe's analysis of the ludic dimensions of postcolonial politics. (2004, p. 134)

The particular genius of Mutahi's column is to make legible these ambiguous interactions of political performance. Not only do the columns satirize the empty pomp of dictatorial politics, they also enact the ambiguities of popular participation in these processes. In this way, his columns demonstrate the political complexity of the popular in Kenya as a site occupied and employed by both ruler and ruled.

Online Sources

www.kenyanews.com

www.eastandard.net

www.nationaudio.com

Notes

1. I argue that the public face of power is ‘a performance’, ‘a drama’ hence my use of the term the ‘dramaturgy of power’. My idea of this ‘performance’ is best captured by Mbembe's description of the postcolony as a ‘simulacral regime’ (1992, p. 9). Karlstrom (2003) summarizes this regime as one in which ‘the people pretend to obey and the rulers pretend to believe in their obedience, resulting in an inescapable cycle of pointless violence and cynical laughter’ (p. 58).

2. This ‘feat’ was only surpassed by Edward Rodwell's Coast Causerie, which was published regularly in the East African Standard for close to 50 years.

3. For a detailed reading on market literature, see Newell (2001).

4. For a detailed reading of this metaphor, see Schatzberg (1988).

5. This is a common rhetorical way of expressing ‘loyalty’ in Kenya.

6. I want to argue however that this matrix is only valid up to a point for in fact even in the ‘invented’ sense, the matrix itself is inverted when children grow and have to provide for their fathers.

7. Mbembe notes that he uses the term commandement in the way it was used to ‘denote colonial authority, that is in so far as it embraces the images and structures of power and coercion, the instruments and agents of their enactment, and a degree of rapport between those who give orders and those who are supposed to obey them, without of course discussing them’ (Mbembe, 2001, p. 30).