Githongo: The man and the secrets

The Watergate break-in and the attendant political fallouts happen to have been part of my media and public opinion studies seminar at school some time back.

No doubt the Brits and others have their own interests in this (they always call it "enlightened self-interest") just as there were several forces that needed Nixon out of office at the time (not just the Democrats), some of which Americans will never want to hear you discussing in public (the same applies to events surrounding JFK's demise).

Octogenerian Mark Felt confessed last year to having been Carl Bernstein's and Bob Woodward's "Deep Throat," but some biographers of his boss at the FBI at the time (John Edgar Hoover) had already expressed reservations about his (Felt's) loyalties earlier on.

In his book THE MAN AND THE SECRETS, a Hoover biographer (Curt Gentry, am not sure he was the author) it would seem already had his pulse on this.

Githongo has every chance to survive the "you were a mole" onslaught on him just as much as he could succumb to overdoses of Kikuyu nationalism in the process that, in recent times, appears to be finding its expression in persons and processes outside Kibaki's control (let the reader understand).

The Brits and other nations know much more about our nation, its resources , potential, leadership, na kadhalika not so much because Githongo and others may have told them but because much that goes for the new international / world order is skewed in their favour.

Going the Gamal Abdel Nasser way (of nationalizing the economy) or, in these Chaves hours, rabid anti-Mzunguism, is always an attractive option in trying to break such a strangle-hold; but our leaders often sound hollow when they voice such (because they are often less motivated by public interest and more by personal interest, i.e becoming our Black Whitemen).

It's partly why I have consistently insisted that change ain't coming our way any soon (even 2007) as most of the current political players / leaders are either sold out to the previously-mentioned international interests or are the hypocrites who would rather we defended them in their sins when they are killing us softly (consider corruption and much that goes for "privatization").

An obvious disconnect in such dialogues often is our present crop of leaders' repeated refrains / references to our brutal colonial past in their internecine and / or such other wars with foreigners.

You see, that provokes the romantic in us that naturally evokes the romanticised negritude that was mostly blind to our inherent weaknesses in our carvoting with forces on the world stage.

Leopold Senghor is long dead physically and ideologically; I keep wondering why anyone would would to ressurect him.

I see some good souls attempting to conveniently rouse him (mostly some of my dearest Kikuyu buddies - no pun or offence intended to the community) in the marketplace of ideas in the Church, sections of the media, on the Office of Public Communications forum, BBC threads and other fora where a similar debate is obtaining; but how far can we go with such in shaping our destiny as a country in the 21st century?

It is Wole Soyinka, if my memory serves me right, who reminded Leopold that a tiger need not prove its tigritude.

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