“When the public opinion decides it wants to hate a woman, it’s always much, much worse than when they decide to hate a man,” remarked Canadian diplomat Gary Bedell on a BBC interview while talking about his friendship with Winnie Mandela.
That statement couldn’t be truer in Kenya than it is anywhere else in the world. Especially if the said woman is in politics. To paint a quick picture; this is a country where majority male politicians mentioned in scandals where Kenyans have lost billions of money are given podiums in church and celebrated even by newspaper columnists as ‘shrewd business men’ or dismissed by critics as ‘someone building a war-chest’ for the next elections or any other word that can be ignored casually.
Yet a woman with similar allegations of public theft can’t dare appear on a women’s magazine. Never mind the matter was not competently concluded by a male dominated Parliamentary Committee. It’s like we’re saying: “How dare she, a woman, steal money that only male politicians are entitled to steal?”
Don’t get it twisted, this blog doesn’t in anyway advocate for sanitization of people who steal money in the name of being women. However, we need to go ballistic when the media attempts to sanitize known, notorious thieves who steal our public funds with impunity regardless of gender.
The Canadian diplomat was right in the end and it’s the reason most women who were elected to Parliament had to work twice as hard as their male counterparts. It’s therefore befitting that the Kenyan women MPs take time and study the late political icon, Winnie Mandela’s political life. Here are a few tips.
Now that we’ve established that Kenya, like South Africa and indeed the rest of the world is a man’s world, as a woman MP you must make cognizant of this fact and develop a thick skin. For starters, refuse to be drawn into controversial debates. Winnie Mandela made the fight for the people in Soweto bigger and the media eventually had to gravitate more to her political work than personal.
Those MPs being linked to the conman who had a ‘special relationship’ with them would do well to learn from this and realize commenting on this is pointless and only serves to undermine your position. Let the law take its course. Focus on your promises to your constituents. Repeat the stuff you’re doing for your people at every opportunity and hope that that’s what people will dwell on.
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