They say there are many ways to skin a cat. However, since I quite like cats, I will substitute that saying with the more acceptable: there's more than one way to cook an egg.
The last couple of months have seen valiant attempts by young Kenyans, with their eyes on the future, to force the government to be truly transparent and accountable to the people.
The methods used have all been a roaring success no matter what the naysayers would like to think. For me, the most impressive method was that of occupying various places.
When the history of this period is finally written, it will probably be found that the most significant space that the pro-freedom protesters occupied was the minds of Kenyans.
In fact, not just the consciousness of Kenyans but also the minds of other freedom-loving people across our continent and the globe as a whole.
The forces of evil (sorry, that should have read the forces of the state) did their absolute worst, killing, abducting and maiming the pro-freedom demonstrators, but they could not wipe the minds of Kenyans.
As I write this, the day after a successful shutdown of the Nairobi CBD on Nane Nane, there are voices around me and on social media calling for an end to the agitation against an uncaring state.
I may not be an active participant on the streets of Nairobi and other parts of the country, but I am an active supporter. And my two bob’s worth contribution to the discourse is: Don’t stop. It ain’t over. In fact, it has only just begun.
If I had any say in what next, I would suggest a number of other strategies to employ to keep the state and its enforcers accountable. Today, I will outline just one.
One of the gripes by Kenyans agitating for freedom, constitutionalism, transparency and accountability has been the manner in which the protests have been policed.
Using their well-documented unorthodox methods, such as abduction and brute force arrests, the police have placed people in custody, and assuming they intend to see the process through, these people will be arraigned in various courts across the country.
This is where my suggested strategy comes in: deploying court watching briefs. I am aware that the strategy is already being employed by a number of rights organisations and rights defenders, but it would not hurt to get a few more people and organisations involved.
I did some research and I believe the provisions of the Victim Protection Act 2014 make such a strategy possible.
A court watching brief is defined as “the practice of representing persons who are not strictly parties to proceedings and its advantages”. In other words, individuals or groups can apply to the court to follow the proceedings to monitor police conduct and report inefficiencies.
In South Africa, where I live, the Democratic Alliance (DA), the country’s erstwhile main opposition party and now a member of the Government of National Unity, has used this strategy with some notable success.
It began in the Western Cape where in 2014 the provincial Department of Community Safety and Police Oversight came up with the idea of a Court Watching Briefs Unit and has monitored thousands of cases since.
This unit works to monitor court proceedings in order to determine police inefficiencies and monitor police conduct. When an issue is found, a comprehensive report is compiled and referred to the police commissioner, or in our case Ipoa, for immediate action.
This is just one mechanism that could be deployed to evaluate police performance in these maandamano cases, and indeed other cases, to improve police efficiency and its conduct.
In fact, if I were Ipoa, I would encourage such initiatives from the public as it would make our work easier and the failures of the police could be studied and rectified, resulting in a win-win-win situation.
Of course, all of this would depend heavily on the willingness of the state and its enforcers to be monitored so closely.
One presumes they would be reluctant, as they appear to like carrying out their deeds in the dark. However, it is time the authorities learnt that sunlight is the best disinfectant.