Deputy Chief Justice Nancy Baraza

Chief Justice Nancy Baraza's alleged harassment of a female security officer in a city mall  exposes the many contradictions that Africa's elite women undergo. Her indictment ought to put into consideration that she is a product of her upbringing.

The African elite woman is a victim of socio-psychological violence from the day she joins school. She has to cope with teasing from male pupils from the word ‘Go.’ Teachers do not understand her.  Rarely do they encourage her.  Typically, teachers and parents ask boys: ‘why is a girl defeating you’? While this is supposed to motivate the boy, it indirectly tells the girl who defeated the boy that there is something wrong with her.

For an elite woman to survive the education cycles, she is locked both at home and in school. Mobility and interaction with others is out of  question.  She grows up a loner. The only thing she is familiar with is ‘cut-throat competition’ in order to get ahead in life. This triggers a high level of anxiety that puts her in a combative mood.  With roadblocks right and left, she becomes sensitive, moody and operates on flight-mode- ready for takeoff.

The violence that elite women have borne in Kenya is mind-boggling.  I remember that every beginning of term in my high school, school trucks would do a number of trips to Muranga for pregnancy tests on all female students!  We were threatened as we were herded together for tests! On the entire journey to Muranga hospital, passers-by knew it was our school day’s pregnancy testing time.  Hospital services had to be put on hold to give priority to us for this exceedingly mortifying exercise! I shiver when I recall the embarrassing public lectures at parade and of the dangers wrought by unplanned pregnancies. The language used was, to say the least, psychologically violent. Dialogue was rarely used in school schedules and practice.  Girls were ordered in straight lines to the dining room. It was order throughout.  Begin with a prayer; stop eating when the bell rings, and blah blah.  All this was done to ‘modernize’ us to be different from those who did not go to school.  We were never trained to build bridges, compromise, and dialogue.

This reminds  me of a midwife who mistreated me in a Thika Hospital as well as a  nurse and security officer who beat me while admitted in a nursing home in 2007 simply because I was an elite. It reminds me of housemaids who rise up against their mistresses simply because  the mistresses have an elevated social status. It reminds me of the cruel mother-in-law syndrome and high school headmistresses who are exceedingly punitive when dealing with girl students. 

Molded by violence, the elite woman has become violent when dealing with issues confronting her. Baraza’s violent behavior, if it can be called that, is not unique to her. Why was she being chased like a criminal?  Why did Kerubo leave her security desk unmanned to chase after Baraza?  Who was going to inspect the other women who came after Baraza from a security standpoint?  Was Kerubo  not trying to prove a point?  Did she not also have her own Machiavellian method to settle scores with a woman she deemed ‘elite’ and rushed after her to ‘put her in her place’?  Protocol demands that if you find that you have been bypassed as a security guard, rather than leave your post, you ought to seek the assistance of a supervisor. You must not engage in confrontation.

It is not even clear whether in Baraza’s case she endured a level of harassment by Kerubo due to her gender, to warrant her reaction, or whether this was just a joke that took a sinister turn.  The whole saga could have been a big joke rather than the cruel, gendered assault it has dissolved into. Sadly, it has been blown out of proportion and resulted into national debate on ‘Ngoma cia aka’ - Women madness.

If Nancy Baraza did pinch Esther Kerubo, then she committed a crime but the vitriolic responses from the general public, and the reaction of the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), displayed in different media outlets, have not been commensurate with her crime.  They seem too quick to vilify and crucify Baraza and what her personality stands for – an elite Kenyan woman, who holds a high public office, and one who is not reliant on a man for survival. This is the image those who vilify her are reacting against and that is why the vitriol is disproportionately larger than her crime.  Her enemies wrestle with the fear that more Kenyan women will ascend to high office, liberate themselves from patriarchal inhibitions, and wield some power, so Baraza must be dealt with as a ‘sacrificial lamb’ to assuage their fears.

Lesson to other elite women

Let us not be too quick as women to ‘throw the first stone.’  The big lesson to every elite woman is that you too are a product of a violent society.  Join hands with your fellow woman, elite or not, and mend fences quickly. Find ways of detraumatizing yourselves from  the inbuilt anger, anxiety, loneliness, fear and aggression you have all been taught.  Minimize it together before you take each other to court in front of the very people who have taught you this violence.  Today it is Baraza, tomorrow it is you.   I had to resign my first job due to a misunderstanding that nobody bothered to clarify.  Had I not resigned, my career path would have been different.

Also, build bridges with subaltern women. Differences between us and them were created by our society.  Let us move out of our privileged positions and treat our juniors, maids, mama mboga, the traders in Wakulima, Gikomba, Kamukunji, Uhuru Market, and Jericho Market fairly. Let us say ‘no’ to the confining zones and the gating policies that separate us and create exclusive cities. The men leave you in the gated elite communities and ‘cross over’ to drink with subaltern men in nyama choma zones, which are far from being exclusive. Here they meet subalterns and assuage the fears between them. The more we are gated, the more isolated we will become, and rarely will elite men support you in the spaces you share. They will always find something to say you are not good enough, or just give you tokenism.

We can only free ourselves from this by building bridges with our low income sisters so that we create a critical mass to deal with patriarchy that led us to this level of violence in the first place.  

By Dr Mary Kinyanjui

Insitute of Development Studies, University of Nairobi.