WHERE is the life, the soul and the heart that liberation promised to deliver to our politics?

WHERE is the life, the soul and the heart that liberation promised to deliver to our politics?

To wrestle with the answers, one needs to be as innocent as a child and as daring as a dying warrior, who no longer has concern for a life that is about to end.

This does not suggest that fighting for truth is a suicidal mission.

But to bark in defence of truth from a safe distance, without putting up a fight for it, is dicey. It is like fence sitters who never stand their ground in most trying hours.

This is called opportunism, the same as running with the sheep and hunting with the wolves.

Most of these opportunists are as dangerous as fork-tongued serpents that can cold-bloodedly spread poison on the liberation path and yet frolic in the warmth brought about by the striking victory of struggle.

Beware of such snakes as they are lithe enough to glide to the highest point of power and destroy the valued tree of liberation branch by branch.

Fighting for the truth means standing by it in its hours of defeat and victory.

It means seeing the writing long before the wall crumbles and there is nothing left to read in the rubble.

It means being forever watchful of poisonous snakes that may shed their skins under the celebrated glare of changing seasons but without intent to alter their deadly ways whether pre- or post-liberation.

Fighting for the truth means digging deep to remove the evil that has taken root in the silent heart of our beloved motherland and continent to make crime the reigning logic of political life.

That logic found curious expression in post-independent Kenya, where they coined the phrase, "it is our time to eat".

Of significance is that one needs not wait to reach terminal stage of life to begin to seek, find and express the truth.

Fighting for the truth earlier rather than later helps to prevent corruption from entrenching itself as the governing ethic of the state.

Pursuit of the truth though is not a celebrated undertaking. Truth-seeking is not smooth sailing. It is hard and steep.

It can be lonely. It can make you lose friends. It can make you gain enemies. And when told that the truth shall set you free, also know that those that stand accused by the truth may not respond with kid gloves or suddenly ooze with the milk of human kindness to show repentance.

Remember, fairness is not a natural reaction of those that have built their comfort, pleasure, wealth and power in less honourable ways, especially when they are exposed and public outrage exposes their rot.

And when they respond like rattlesnakes, when subterfuge and killing becomes the means for staying alive, know that crime has become their lifeblood.

Given a chance to lay their hands on levers of power, they will stop at nothing to reduce the state into a gangsters' paradise. In the end, it becomes a dog-eat-dog situation.

And life becomes dangerous.

To make life safe again, the country must rid itself of the chaff that has nestled into government propelled by greed and intent to plunder because "it is our turn to eat".

Only then shall clean air race into our lungs to sing the national anthem with pure conviction, raise our flag with unreserved patriotism and value every page of our Constitution.

There lies the life, soul and heart that liberation had promised us.