Celebrations to mark the rise of the first woman to head an arm of government were marred by news reports that a senior government official was in ritual seclusion where he was not allowed to see women. Apparently, they could bring him bad luck in his lofty political ambitions.
Martha Koome assumed office as Chief Justice and President of the Supreme Court on May 24. Two days before, Justin Bedan Njoka Muturi, Speaker of the National Assembly, was enthroned as the Mt Kenya kingpin.
Ahead of the ceremony at Mukurwe wa Nyagathanga Gikuyu shrine in Murang’a, The Star political reporter Moses Odhiambo broke the story of Muturi’s eight days of seclusion.
“Muturi holed up for secret rituals to succeed Uhuru,” the headline said. Odhiambo reported that, “The Speaker cannot leave his house or see a woman and eats a special diet for the eight days while in seclusion. He is allowed to only meet certain people – elders who are cleansed – for the period”.
The story did not say why the VIP initiate was not allowed to see a woman. The elders who were allowed to see him, and those who enthroned him, were all male.
The Star reported that, “women who had arrived at the site clad in traditional attire to entertain the guests were shocked after they were informed that no women were allowed into the historical site”.
“The women hovered at the gate of the site for hours as the rituals continued. Female police officers and journalists were also not spared and had to follow the proceedings from the fence”.
The Muturi coronation brought into sharp relief the schizophrenia afflicting Kenya over the place of women in public life. Yet the media did not pick up this malignancy for in-depth dissection.
To suggest that women are a source of evil, or at least they are ritually unqualified to attend important communal events, flies in the face of loud proclamations that men and women are equal and that the wellbeing and progress of society depends on the inputs of both.
The appointment of a woman to high office such as CJ Koome’s is easy to praise, or lack of such an appointment easy to grumble about. But the media appears to be incapable of seeing beyond these events to notice the entrenched ideologies underpinning exclusion, namely, cultural norms that depict women as not only inferior to men but also as sources of ritual uncleanness and social decadence.
This, for The Observer, is the crux of the struggles for gender justice. Until such taboos that so powerfully anchor patriarchy are turned on their heads and new visions of man and woman unveiled and entrenched in our society, the war for gender equity will never be won.
Scribes have an important role here. Muturi’s coronation provided an excellent opportunity to launch a timely debate on retrogressive ideologies that hold back women from public spaces of power. But the media squandered the opportunity, choosing to focus instead on the politics of Uhuru succession.
Ladies and gentlemen of the press, we are now entering the silly season when a politician is a Christian in the morning, a Sikh in the afternoon and a staunch believer in African Religion by night. Retrogressive beliefs will be revived and invoked solely in the pursuit of power. The task of good journalism is to question such beliefs and practices.
See you next week!
1 thought on “What media missed in Muturi coronation as Mt Kenya kingpin”
Chapter 2 of the constitution recognises cultures. And from the biblical perspective, God created man and later a woman from man and gave them different responsibilities.