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4.1 The ICC as RELIGIOUS WAR The depiction of the ICC as RELIGIOUS
WAR is realized by a number of lexical and syntactic means. The ICC has been
ascribed a life of its own as exemplified in the prayer rallies. The emergence of
the ICC is described in analogy with religious characteristics. The four suspects
indicted at the ICC sought support through political rallies that came to be
known as prayer meetings in various parts of the country. The rallies would
ordinarily start off as prayer meetings in which the clergy would conduct
intercession prayers on behalf of the suspects. After the prayers, the suspects and
other politicians would then address the people attending. Uhuru is quoted in a
prayer meeting at Nakuru, saying: 1) Sisi hayo yote tumemwachia mungu baba
wetu. ‘We have left all in God’s - our father’s - hands’1 The metaphor in
example 1 above, Mungu baba ‘God the Father’ conceptualizes God as the
ultimate judge. The context in which Uhuru utters the above is to confess his
innocence and acknowledge that he has been indicted at The Hague through
false testimony and witness fixing, and hence he had surrendered his fate to
God. From the example, we derive in Christianity a fundamental metaphor ‘God
is the Father’: this though could mean that human beings are literally ‘the
children of God’, or it could also imply that the relationship between God and
mankind is like that of a father to a child. The son–father relationship raises the
same issue: did Jesus’ claim to be the ‘Son of God’ imply a biological fact or did
it imply that he was as a son of a father? (CharterisBlack 2004). Interpretation
requires that God will take on the prototypical attributes of a father – protection
from danger, provision of material needs and moral guidance. Similarly, the son
takes on the prototypical attributes of dependency, seeking protection, needing
material and spiritual guidance. The underlying communicative thought is that
God is the ultimate judge. The metaphor constitutes the beliefs among Christians
and could also be taken as simply comparative. This interpretation closely
derives from Lakoff (1996) who discusses the metaphoric understanding of
NATION as FAMILY and how it directly informs our political worldview. The
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NATION as FAMILY metaphor structures entire worldviews precisely mapping
between the nation and the
1 Our own free translation of the Kiswahili metaphor. The example and
subsequent translations rendered the meaningin English though lost in the
structure and original metaphoricity hence most of the translated metaphors may
sound as ordinary expressions. Globe, 6 (2018) Lumwamu, Indede, Matu 157
family. Metaphor is very well suited to religious contexts because it is a primary
means by which the unknown can be conceptualized in terms of what is already
known. Since very few people would claim to have direct personal knowledge
of a divine being, metaphors are a natural means for exploring the possible
forms that such a divinity might take and for expressing religious experiences
(Charteris-Black 2004: 174). Metaphor is, therefore, the prime means of
providing spiritual explanations since they can only be expressed by referring to
what is experienced in the physical world. The topics that are dealt with by
religion – the origins of life, suffering, the struggle between good and evil, life
and death – are also topics for which judgement and evaluation are often
necessary. Metaphor creates meaning by accessing subliminal experience; in
religion it has a similar role because religion considers the possibilities of a
sublime world beyond this world. Table 1 below provides some examples of
lexical items extracted from ICC discourses in the semantic field of religion.
Table 1:
Lexical item Source domain
Mungu ‘God’ Religion
Msalaba ‘cross’ Crucifix
Mzigo ‘burden’ Crucifixion
Omba ‘pray’ Prayer
Mwenye uwezo ‘creator’ Creation
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Mkombozi ‘saviour’ Salvation
Shetani ‘Satan’ Sin (Source: adopted from own research data) The lexical items
in Table 1 belong to the semantic domain of religion and they represent different
attributes or concepts including prayer, persecution, creation and salvation.
These lexical terms were used severally by the indictees in their utterances
during prayer meetings in reference to the ICC. For instance, Shetani was used
by Uhuru to refer to people with evil intentions who engineered their indictment
at the ICC. Understanding the metaphor entails mapping terms of one
conceptual domain onto the other unrelated conceptual domain. The mappings
are a result of two kinds of generalizations, namely, sense relation generalization
and inferential generalization. The terms Mungu ‘God’, msalaba ‘crucifix’,
mzigo ‘burden’, omba ‘pray’ mwenye uwezo ‘creator’,
mkombozi ‘salvation’, and shetani ‘Satan’ are words that originate from the
semantic field of religion, but are understood as referring to aspects of the ICC.
The relationship between the two domains is mediated by inferential
generalization, inferring the meanings of the target domain from source domain
and generalization across conceptual domains. In addition, metaphors have an
evangelical role in religion because they are easier to accept than literal truths
and they are open to individual interpretation. The reader or hearer finds the
meaning in the metaphor. Prayer rallies therefore play quite an important role in
creating meaning of the ICC and providing frameworks of evaluation. This
explains the cognitive contribution of metaphor which enables the users to
conceive the worldview of the ICC as sacrifice and persecution and hence the
conceptual key; the ICC IS RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION. This more or less
explains why Uhuru and Ruto opted for prayer meetings to mobilize support
from the general public against the ICC. The prayer meetings present a powerful
tool for mobilizing spiritual and religious support. They invoke divine
intervention in the conflict and thus the conceptual metaphor the ICC IS
RELIGIOUS WAR, which will be won or lost on faith grounds. Lakoff contends
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that the metaphorical mappings preserve the cognitive
Metaphoric conceptualization Globe, 6 (2018) 158 typology (that is, the image-
schema structure) of the source domain in a way consistent with the inherent
structure of the target domain (Lakoff 1993: 215). The indictees’ voice represent
‘innocent victims’ suffering at the expense of other people who directly
participated in the PEV or benefitted from it. The prayer discourse of the ICC
achieves just that and hence considers prayer meetings as discourses of
mobilization; bringing together two communities (Kikuyu and Kalenjin) through
the narrative that the ICC is targeting their community (Uhuru and Ruto)
unfairly. Studies on metaphors have provided insights on how metaphor in
discourse arouses powerful images that shape perception, public opinion, and
ultimately influence comprehension and interpretation of issues in society. The
message in a metaphor has the potential to reach the audience in a more
powerful and captivating manner. As Ngonyani (2006: 15) elaborately notes,
“metaphors provide a conceptual framework, or prism through which
information and events are viewed”. By conceptualizing the ICC as
RELIGIOUS WAR, God’s intervention is sought through prayer. Metaphors
thus help to make complex and controversial issues understandable to the public
and help promote and legitimize the ideological viewpoints of particular groups
(Todoli 2007: 51).
The 2010 constitutional changes in Kenya are meant to have inspired a shift in
the worldview of a hitherto predominantly patriarchal society. Under it,
womanhood has been re-imagined. The Kenyan man is waking up to new
realities like affirmative action, land inheritance, equality in marriage, sexual
harassment and gender balance at work.
The growing nervousness, for the men at least, on the place and meaning of
woman in Kenya is best captured in the use of honorifics. ‘Mrs’, ‘Miss’, and
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‘Ms’ no longer carry the straightforward meaning
they used to have. It used to be obvious that a married woman should be a
‘Mrs’. It is still fashionable to be a ‘Mrs’ since it indicates marital status
which, to many, is important. The idea that one is married suggests an aspect of
functionality, normalcy, and social correctness.
But, increasingly, there are contentions as to whether a woman should belong to
a man; a husband, for example. The idea of a woman giving up her maiden
surname, belonging to the father, for the husband, has been questioned, too. In a
sense these are problems faced in the quest for selfdefinition since naming kills
an aspect of one’s story; herstory!
Surnames suggest ethnicity, for example. They give an idea of whose daughter
one has been before marriage. For this reason there is an increasing use of
hyphenated surnames. Wanjiru Maina-Kibet, for example, gives the impression
that Wanjiru, a daughter of Maina, is married to Kibet.
The problem then is how to honour the hyphenated. For instance, what
implications are there in the etiquette expressed: Mrs Wanjiru Maina-Kibet? The
uneasy matter to live with, for some men, is the failure by some women to take
up their ‘husbands’ own surnames; the refusal, in a sense, to belong to the man!
When Wanjiru Maina, for example, refuses to take up Kibet’s family name, it
becomes harder for her to get the honorific Mrs, as Mrs Wanjiru Maina, since
the impression created is that Maina would be her husband. But isn’t it even
more complicated when Jane Mumbi Maina drops Maina as well in preference
for her own middle name, Mumbi? The new constitution of Kenya has brought
in a new governance system with the post of Deputy President. While the
President’s wife is referred to as ‘First Lady’ the Deputy President’s certainly
cannot be ‘Second Lady’. While logical and sound, the title is easy to
misinterpret and to lead to faux pas as far as protocol is concerned. At the same
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time, the constitution seems to have envisaged that the President of Kenya, when
male, will always be married to one woman. There seems to be no room for
several First Ladies,€ although in Jacob Zuma’s South African case, writers
with etiquette have afforded all of his wives the “First Lady†title. In that
case it is impossible then to have a specific “First Lady.†This, then, is the
best example of how ‘new’ or ‘progressive’ westernstyled constitutions in
Africa are struggling to assert themselves. They seem to be alien to cultural
ways of life in many cases.
Popular culture has tended to deal with honorifics through parody. Benga
musicians, for example, single out ‘mwalimu teacher madam’ as an interesting
character. She is not your average lady in a township but rather a woman of
means. She transcends the definition of womanhood by marriage as she seems
capable of finding her way around without the help of a ‘minder’ that a
husband would be. In Jamnazi Afrika’s song, ‘I am not sober’, the lead singer
gives a list of friends that he wants to thank and buy beer. In that list, most
of these friends are men. Among the handful women on the list is ‘mwalimu
teacher madam’ who is thanked in as similar a fashion as all other men. There
is a suggestion then that she is not as ‘normal’ a woman as the rest. She in
essence is ‘masculinised’. The fact that she is often at the bar or beer club on her
own suggests that she is in charge of her own destiny; she does not report to
anyone about her whereabouts. She therefore blurs the imagined gender line, she
being female but enjoying freedom similar to that of men in a patriarchal
society.
In Vioja Mahakamani, Kenya’s longest running sitcom on Kenya Broadcasting
Corporation Television based on court drama, the male characters are portrayed
as being disillusioned by the power held by the female judge or magistrate in
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court.
Many characters find themselves calling the judge by the respectable African
“mama.†That often earns them some rebuke from both the lady judge and
the male prosecutor. These characters cannot understand why ‘mama’, such a
culturally respectable title, is unwelcome in court. How is it that a respectable
woman cannot be ‘mama’? They cannot even call her ‘madam’ the usual
title of respect for a lady of high status. They must call her
‘Mheshimiwa’ (honourable), which is so far removed from their thoughts.
Justice Richard Kuloba, who has been a professor of law and judge in Kenya as
well as being a writer of note on Kenyan law, points to the problem encountered
by lawyers while addressing women judges. In his book, Courts of Justice in
Kenya, he argues that women judges do not mind how they are addressed. The
tacit agreement seems to be that you may call the judges anything as long as
your title reflects their marital status (where married) and also that they are
judges. That leaves room for wrong address when the said lady judge is
unmarried. Some of the titles Kuloba has heard include: ‘My lady,’My
ladyship,’ and ‘Madam Judge’. He also has heard hilarious titles from
lawyers such as ‘My fair lady’ and also ‘the charming lady’ in the court’s
corridors. There are references to ‘Mrs Dr’ or ‘Professor Mrs’ within the
Kenyan academy. These create interesting problems as they are most often
exaggerations. The references occur in social places and some official functions
alike. Marriage is still carried as a badge of honour among many women in
Kenya. It therefore might not be strange to hear titles given in jest but taken
seriously such as ‘Mrs MP’ or ‘Mrs Senator’ which capture both the office
of the lady in question and the marital status.
