set the fire to the third bar

"Remember, remember, the 5th of November." That was something Guy Fawkes said, when he hatched a brilliant plan to blow up the British parliament building during the days when government was oppressive and there were no freedoms and there were sedition laws that could be used to arrest people just for saying the wrong thing or talking to a person whose ideas were deemed "not conducive to the continued well being of the powers that be." They made a movie based loosely on that story, V for Vendetta. In there, the guy saw a country where government had overrun their boundaries, where people's very souls were no longer their own, where you were not allowed to have an opinion on grounds it may cause chaos, where the police (interestingly called Fingermen) could do whatever they wanted and get away with it. And he was saddened that people had forgotten all about Guy Fawkes and the 5th of November. So he decided he'd go through with the blowing up of parliament on that day to remind them. You see all Fawkes wanted to do was to inspire people. To remind them that it's their right, that government should be afraid of the people and not the other way round, coz the power really emanates from the people.

It's a powerful emotion, fear, if one can take advantage of it. Because that is how dictators emerge. Fear, and hate. You get a group of conservative, middle-aged, middle-income people who have longing memories of a better time past, you point out to them the rampant insecurity, the rising inflation and unemployment, hunger, increasing instances of things I cannot mention that indicate a massively decadent state of morality in society, you tell them how much worse it's gonna get, get them to retreat into their corners, and then tell them it's so-and-so's fault. Tell them the other-colored people are to blame. Tell them people of this or that religion are scientifically inferior, and beneath their stations in life. Get them to be afraid, and to loathe. Because with just those two feelings alone, it's like when you corner a cat, you can get them to do whatever you lead them to believe will make it all better. Create chaos, show them a world with anarchy, "Remind them why they need us," said that current Chancellor of Britain in the movie when the people were showing certain promise of starting to wonder who was really in charge. You see, people naturally want to be led. William Penn said, "If we will not be governed by God, we shall be governed by tyrants," at the beginnings of the American experiment. There's a vaccuum up there, one that will be filled, whether by good men or by an evil empire.

John Githongo thinks that Africans are the most subservient people in the world when faced with intimidation, or force, or power. And he should know. "When all is said and done, Africa is a place where we grovel at the feet of our leaders" and beg them to please do right by us as though it's a favor they're doing us. And when they don't we say it's ok, maybe tomorrow will be better. I'm wondering how long it's gonna take us to realise, tomorrow does not get better just because of the mere passage of time, it gets better because people [=us] MAKE it better. Change comes because people demand for it. Justice Louis Brandeis said that in a democracy the most important office is the office of the citizen. In the Britain of those days it seemed the people had forgotten about it. And in the Kenya of these days, I'd say we've never even known it. I've been watching that series Hillary Ng'weno and the Nation Media Group made, Making of a Nation. About that time when multipartism was banned in Kenya, about how men like JM Kariuki, Pio Gama Pinto, Tom Mboya and later Robert Ouko got shot just because they were getting too popular, and their ideas were considered too radical (=anti-government), about how the KPU luo leaders were all detained and then later locked out of the general election through a technicality, again because they didn't agree with the government. And, of course, everyone stood by and watched as these injustices got served.

The real Guy Fawkes didn't go through. His plan was foiled just in time. But V in the movie (being a movie), did succeed. In either case, though, the point was made. People can, if they come together, stand up for their rights and defeat tyranny. All it takes is that one person who's willing to die for the cause. In the last of those Nixon interviews conducted by David Frost after Watergate exploded and he had to resign, Frost asked him if what he was trying to say was that there were situations where the president can decide if it's in the best interests of the nation to do something illegal. Nixon answered, "I'm saying when the president does it, that means it's not illegal." Imagine that!

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