Strengthen life writing to counter lies, disinformation, revisionist narratives

Memoirs and biographies can help preserve Kenya’s history and counter disinformation. [iStockphoto]

One of the greatest rewards of getting involved in producing memoirs, biographies and autobiographies is that one inevitably gets a glimpse of history from many a lived perspective. Allow me to use the concept of Kenya as a country, for example. From 1895, we were part of the East Africa Protectorate. In 1920, the protectorate was transformed into the Colony of Kenya. So we were subjects of the British Crown, had to embrace the English language and Africans were displaced from their ancestral lands, among other things- a matter that strangely never comes up when we are discussing international debts, but I digress.

Then in 1952, at the height of resistance to colonial rule and its excesses, thousands of people were detained in camps while many others were forcibly moved into fortified villages. And finally, in 1963, the Union Jack was lowered and the Kenyan flag proudly fluttered in the luxuriant wind of independence. Looking at Kenya from that historical-account perspective, you encounter statistics and memorable events, both good and bad. However, reading real people’s lived accounts of the various epochs of history changes the game completely. For instance, the historical account studied in schools of the Emergency period is markedly shallower than what you encounter in books such as Caroline Elkins’s Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya, which draws on extensive archival research and testimony from survivors.

In life writing, real life is breathed into historical records and statistics and one sees, feels, smells and even touches the scars the various vicissitudes of history have, over the years, wrought on the people.

In Mwalimu Elijah Waiganjo’s Through a Teacher’s Eye, we get to learn how the tapestry of African culture buckled in the detention camps, upending unwritten customary rules that separated elders from younger people. This is the kind of detail that can disappear from a conventional account but becomes vivid through the memories of those who lived it.

Things that have only been whispered in the dark come to light as you interview elders, relatives and friends of those whose lives were intertwined with such events as the First World War, the coming of missionaries and the establishment of the church. As many seek to join politics, works such as Moody Awori’s Riding on a Tiger caution that it is easy to get on a tiger, but getting off is not so easy.

Before I read Yoweri Kaguta Museveni’s Sowing the Mustard Seed, I had for the longest time seen the Ugandan President as a strongman who could not fear anything. Until I came to the scene where he spots the dreaded Patrick Shaw at the Hilton Hotel in Nairobi and flees through the back of the hotel, eventually taking a taxi towards Namanga. Shaw was a Kenya Police Reservist and administrator at Starehe Boys’ Centre and School, and became one of Nairobi’s most feared lawmen. Museveni’s account of the encounter is a striking reminder of how a life story can reveal a side of a historical figure that the public image conceals.

Reading President Museveni’s autobiography also reveals that Kenya formed an important part of the political and organisational story he tells about his road to power. His first edition of Sowing the Mustard Seed, published in 1997, was largely based on an interview he gave after the Bush War. In 2016, Museveni published a revised edition, saying he wanted to correct errors and distortions in the earlier account.

Long story short, life writing gives a lived perspective that can run counter to official history, which is often shaped by those who hold power and by the purposes for which they are written. For the ghostwriters, interviewers and other people involved in autobiographical works, these works offer a front-row-seat view of the journey of life we have travelled as a people.

More importantly, a comparison of what emerges from life writing and the historical record leaves one with no doubt that who we are as a people is more than a chronological assemblage of historical facts. We are also a people of stories, memories, interpretations and competing narratives. Simply put, a nation is as good as how it is narrated, which brings me to my point today.

We are less than a year away from a general election. And it is hard to avoid pointing out that, in the same way we are a narration, we should beware of the narratives we craft and etch in people’s minds about what Kenya is.

In this age of deception, politicians may be accused of using goons to disrupt their opponents’ campaign rallies, but there is another, less visible danger in the armies of bloggers and online operatives who spread misinformation and disinformation. They besmirch people, especially those who stand for integrity and public interest, and try to paint a revisionist view of who we are as a people, all in the belief that if a lie is told many times over, it begins to sound like the truth.

This is where English philosopher, statesman and essayist Francis Bacon’s famous “idols of the mind” become useful. Bacon identified four kinds of “idols” that distort human understanding. The Idols of the Tribe arise from common weaknesses in human nature. The Idols of the Cave arise from the particular experiences, education and prejudices of individuals. The Idols of the Marketplace arise from the misleading power of words, while the Idols of the Theatre arise from inherited systems of thought and doctrines accepted without sufficient examination.

Political propaganda can exploit almost all four. Echo chambers reinforce what people already believe. Inherited political narratives can become so entrenched that evidence itself struggles to dislodge them.

The danger is that one hateful narrative produces a counter-narrative and, before long, truth becomes blurred and citizens lack the information they need to make an informed decision at the ballot.

We need to strengthen the area of life writing so that, even as others embark on revisionism and hateful disinformation, the narration of our nation is strong enough that, in the fullness of time, the ties that bind us as a people are stronger than the self-seeking seeds of discord that those who seek power end up sowing, by design or by default.

After all, a people who know their history, in all its complexity and contradictions, are less likely to surrender their collective memory to those who would rewrite it for them.