What is the value of a Kenyan life?

The Kenyan government is refusing to treat Kenyans as adults capable of dealing with the complexity of the world.

For the past six years, Kenya’s self-proclaimed “moral cop”, Dr Ezekiel Mutua, has used his position as the CEO of the Kenya Film Classification Board to impose extremist restrictions on Kenya’s cultural scene. In that time, Mutua has earned the derisive epithet “Deputy Jesus” through his regular fulminations and bans targeting local films and music as well as advertisements and parties that offended his religious sensibilities. Last week, however, to the glee of many on social media, he seemed to get his long-awaited comeuppance. Not only was he fired from his perch, but the country’s Ethics and Anticorruption Commission announced he was under investigation for illegal payments he had allegedly pocketed during his tenure. In truth, it has been a long time coming. While Mutua has vastly expanded the scope of his purview beyond anything even the colonial architects of his organisation intended, he exemplifies the same mentality they had when they created it. The Kenya Film Censorship Board, as it was known when it was established at the close of the colonial epoch, was the culmination of decades of racist and colonial paternalism whose aim was, in the words of one writer, “the suppression of African culture and the efficient penetration of … Christianity”. In the eyes of the British, “the entire African population [w]as extremely vulnerable, psychologically immature and without the mental capacity to consume certain films without corruption”.