Why exactly is it wrong to insult someone, especially “big” people? Must you like everyone? Or if you don’t like someone or what they did, should you keep quiet about it or revile them only in whispers or in the privacy of your home? Should one be punished for calling a public official mavi ya kuku? If so, why?
Kenyan political rhetoric is notoriously full of what would pass as insults. And we have learnt to live with it. Crowds even applaud the politician who unleashes the most colourful epithets. It is humour.
Social media is awash with matusi. No one really bothers. Or if you do, you reply with your own choicest matusi. It is all fun.
How many politicians and other public officials are called names in a single day inside pubs, in matatus, markets, at people’s homes and other places? Is this wrong? Or is it only wrong if the insulter records such episodes and shares them on social media?
What is an insult, anyway? Is calling a politician “watermelon” or “arap Mashamba” insulting? Why? And why shouldn’t they be lampooned? Are citizens under obligation to say only nice things about public officials, or to keep quiet if they have nothing good to say about them? What kind of society would that be?
Are there “good” or acceptable insults and “bad” ones? Is telling off someone that hiyo pesa si ya mama yako an insult? Which are worse insults, those said in vernacular or English? Those referring to certain parts of the human anatomy?
There is plenty of discussion about insults in discourses about media freedom and freedom of expression. It is a fascinating area of intellectual inquiry.
Last week, eight former students of Ambira Boys High School in Siaya were arrested for allegedly insulting Education CS Amina Mohamed and her Interior counterpart Fred Matiang’i.
Media houses edited out parts of the video clip they thought were too graphic. Some newspapers said the insults were “unprintable” – because they referred to parts of the body so-called polite society considers shameful.
(Of course this is a funny argument: why should mentioning any part of the body be considered offensive? Are there “private” and “public” parts of your body? Why? Who made that decision?)
The Ambira boys also bragged that they cheated in their KCSE exams, in an apparent attempt to mock the government’s heavy securitization of the tests.
They recorded themselves and published the video on social media. It went viral. Naturally. Si people love matusi!
The ex-candidates were remanded for seven as police said they were still conducting investigations.
This widely reported incident has generated considerable debate. Was it right to prosecute the boys? For what crime? Isn’t it the height of hypocrisy to hunt down naughty schoolboys in a country where multi-billion-shilling thieves and murderers are celebrated? Haven’t these children learnt the insults from the political classes? And so on.
Some countries have insult laws. But those laws are not meant to stop insults between neighbours, drunkards in a pub or women at the village well.
The laws make offending the “honour and dignity” of public officials, government offices, national institutions and/or the state punishable. Unlike defamation laws which punish untrue speech to protect reputations of persons, insult laws are often used to punish the utterance of truthful statements, opinions, satire, criticism and even humour.
The Constitution protects freedom of expression and of opinion. Campaigners have long observed that such constitutional protection does not cover “nice” speech or opinion, which needs no protection anyway. The Constitution protects speech that is unpleasant or offensive.
Protection of free speech means the right to offend or insult. The Constitution contemplates that not all speech will be pleasant or nice. There is a likelihood of people in power silencing or punishing utterances and speech acts (cartoons, satire, etcetera) that they don’t like. That is what the Constitution protects.
Article 35 is specific about unacceptable speech, which it outlaws: propaganda for war, incitement to violence, hate speech and advocacy of hatred. “In the exercise of the right to freedom of expression, every person shall respect the rights and reputation of others,” the article says.
It bears repeating that, whereas speech that incites violence or hatred should be criminalised on one hand, on the other speech that is merely disturbing or shocking should not be a crime.
One of the biggest insulters in East Africa is the radical Ugandan anthropologist Stella Nyanzi, who mostly researches sexuality. Nyanzi has been hauled before court twice in as many years for vilifying President Yoweri Museveni and his family. She famously called Museveni as “a pair of buttocks” in a Facebook post that grabbed world attention last year.
In a September 16 post for which she was arrested two weeks ago, Nyanzi argued that she could not let Esteri Kokundeka, Museveni’s late mother, rest in peace while her son continued to suffocate Uganda with corruption, lawlessness and dictatorship.
Museveni’s Uganda is far from being a free speech paradise. Its Computer Misuse Act 2011 criminalises communication that “attempts to disturb the peace, quiet or right of privacy of any person.”
The law has been condemned by critics as draconian. Many observers see Stella Nyanzi’s tribulations for her provocative writings as an assault on freedom of expression and opinion.
The Ambira boys case is interesting because it foregrounds freedom of expression. This freedom grants everyone a right to speech that insults/offends. By arresting the boys, the state infringed on their right to this freedom. And by releasing them this right was restored thus affirmed
If you call someone, especially those big people, mavi ya kuku, you are entitled to that colourful opinion. Or what would you have done wrong?
