The Government of Kenya is proposing major changes to several laws to facilitate its war against terrorism in the wake of deadly attacks. Kenyans should be worried that some of the changes may entail abridgment of their rights and freedoms guaranteed in the constitution.

The eighth wonder of the world boasts its banality

Tame wildebeest clogging the clean concrete of Mbagathi

Which arrows smartly past low and high rise tenement

It coerces the zooming traffic to slow down and look

At humanity swarming from Kibera’s troubled slumberland

To uncertain industry in Industrial Area

And the motorist’s camera has long-since seen this jaded parade

Far too often for it to remain a juicy titbit

At tonight’s bush dinner table or on Face book

Or to goad righteous anger when State functionaries

In their pubescent dalliance with 2030 Vision

Seek to herd this wildlife into Nairobi National Park

Faraway from the gaze of well-heeled elites …

The sort of innovative strategic thinking, you

Explain to your inquisitive daughter

Which may compete with the Mara’s majestic beauty

And so your imaginative chic daughter twits

Amazed at this constitutional moment’s flaunted profundity

Perplexed by the nightmare of human wildebeest migrating at sundown –

As they trudge on safari from hungry toil at a Processing Zone

To far-off scenic home that’ll assuage their entitlement to shelter

With monkey and hyena lining the dirt route

To their wretched idyll in the Park.

cc. On the 18th of December, 2008, a Statement on Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity with the backing of 66 states including six African countries, was read at the General Assembly. The statement reaffirmed “the principle of the universality of human rights amongst other things. But a counter-statement arguing against the statement supported by 60 states including a multitude of African countries.

In this essay that shows the discrepancy between universal human rights and their selective application, Lawrence M. Mute asks: Why did the whole of Anglophone Africa decline to support the Statement? Why did such little empathy flow from many discriminated groups to LGBTI communities? Why would many a group discriminated on grounds of race, disability or gender still find it rational to perpetuate discrimination on homosexuals or lesbians?

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/403/KNCHR_l.jpgLawrence M. Mute’s presentation draws upon Kenya’s experiences as documented by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) in the course of its work monitoring the 2005 Constitutional Referendum and the 2007 General Elections. It explains the basis upon which the national commission is persuaded that it is feasible and legally allowable for hate speech legislation to be enacted in Kenya in a manner that does not violate the constitutional right of Kenyans to the freedom of expression. It outlines the key elements that should be included in hate speech legislation and the manner in which those elements should be framed in order, on one hand, to protect Kenyans against hate speech while, on the other hand, to ensure that their right to express themselves is not undermined.