Are rogue Kenyan policemen sent by God?

By OKIYA OMTATAH OKOITI
Published January 10, 2010

Shortly after 21 others and I were arrested on December 24, 2009, Mr. Anthony Kibuchi, the burly new Nairobi Provincial Police Officer (PPO), swaggered into our cell at Central Police Station in the company of Mr. Richard Mugwai, the Central OCPD. Mr. Kibuchi was visibly enraged that we had dared ignore his unlawful orders purporting to ban our peaceful demonstrations, and gone ahead to demonstrate after we complied with the law by notifying the police as required.

Having earned two presidential commendations, Elder of the Burning Spear (EBS) and Order of the Golden Warrior (OGW), Mr. Kibuchi must consider himself a hardworking policeman who has pleased his political masters. And as the Nairobi PPO, he seems to understand just how much unconstitutional power our dysfunctional system that thrives on the impunity of the powerful has put at his disposal, making him an absolute master outside the law, and not the universal servant of the people that he, as a Kenyan policeman, is supposed to be under the law. Hence, he was not going to take lightly the challenge of a bunch of nondescript individuals determined to disobey his whimsical orders so that they could enjoy their constitutional rights as provided for by Kenyan law.

Mr. Kibuchi singled me out and confronted me with questions meant to drive home the point that his letter to us banning the demo, which he had proudly signed off with the initials EBS and OGW in bold after his name, was supreme to the Constitution of Kenya that guarantees all citizens, including lowly ones like us, the rights we were exercising. Frustrated that I was ignoring his prattle, by keeping quiet as the law allows me to when under arrest, he snatched my
Father Christmas hat off my head and threw it hard onto the floor, then smacked me severally with his metal-tipped swagger stick as he snorted out a death threat, saying that he was going to eliminate me soon.

He then ordered one of the detainees, who was holding a pocket bible, to read Romans 13:1-7. Like an incarnate despot arrogantly displaying total disregard of the setting, character, contents, and arrangement of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, Mr Kibuchi proceeded to brutally injure scripture by giving us a secular sermon that tried to insert into the text the idea that it was Christian duty to submit unconditionally into the bondage of government, and that civil disobedience is never allowed for believers.

At the end of his tortuous summon in the police cell, Mr. Kibuchi seemed to be saying that rogue policemen are sent by God to enforce the doctrine of unlimited and unconditional submission to government. And that he could not escape from that messianic responsibility.

In the hands of the ungodly, Romans 13:1-7 is probably the most devastating thing to the uninformed Christian. The famous words, “The powers that be are ordained of God” (Romans 13:1), are a favourite of despots. Throughout history, oppressors have used the text as a club to beat Christians into unconditional submission by unequivocally interpreting it as a command by God for unlimited submission to the governments of men, since all governments are from God and must, therefore, be obeyed.

That complete perversion in the treatment of scripture, that scandalous misuse of a religious text for unconditional subjugation under the authorities in the sense of power politics, is a barefaced falsification of holy writ.

St. Paul is addressing the need for Christians to be law-abiding citizens under a good government. The presupposition of Romans 13:1-7 is naturally that the secular government should obey and sanction the moral law of love. It doesn’t
teach that one should be subject to any authorities whatsoever, even when they do evil. On the contrary, Romans 13 limits the power and reach of civil authority.

In Romans 13:3-4, St. Paul explains the central purpose of a good government: to uphold a stable, beneficial social order, and to punish individuals who engage in evil acts. The welfare of the people is the only legitimate object
which governments and rulers are at liberty to pursue. Like the great prophets, the apostles including St. Paul himself, and Christian martyrs throughout church history who refused to submit to laws and prohibitions that went against their faith, because they understood that human authority is limited, believers are to only submit to those authorities that fit Paul’s description of praising good and punishing evil. Whenever governments don’t do that, then disobedience
becomes a Christian duty.

Further, in Romans 13:5, St. Paul makes it clear that our submission to civil authority must be predicated on conscience not on fear of retaliation. Meaning, our obedience to civil authority is a matter of conscience. We must think and reason for ourselves regarding the justness and rightness of governmental action. Obedience is not automatic or robotic. It is a result of both rational deliberation and moral approbation.

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