Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 457012,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/457012/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 184,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Eng.) Gumbo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 24,
        "legal_name": "Nicholas Gumbo",
        "slug": "nicholas-gumbo"
    },
    "content": "a hero, who can be? Look at what happened when Temu died; he died in a general ward at Kenyatta National Hospital. Before he died, he had been diagnosed with cancer of the prostrate and he needed less than Kshs100,000 to be treated. When this poor man died, he was buried as a faceless Kenyan. Perhaps, the only dignitary who attended his burial was the chief of the area he came from. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, let us compare that with our neighbours in Uganda, up to the time the Kenyan defector called Steven Kiprotich won Uganda an Olympic gold medal, which I still consider to have been Kenya’s gold medal, the only Ugandan to have won a gold medal was Jonah Akibwa. At the time Akibwa won his gold medal in 1972, Idd Amin was the one in power. He did not like Nilotes. Despite the fact that he did not like Nilotes, he saw it fit to name Lira Stadium after Jonah Akibwa. If you go to Uganda today, in Nakasero, there is a street named after Jonah Akibwa. When Jonah Akibwa died in 1997, he was given a State burial, attended by none other than the Prime Minister of Uganda. We have so many heroes who have brought so much joy to this country. We need to recognise them. The attempt that has been made in the First Schedule of this Bill to identify categories of heroes is going to keep off pretenders. We know, for example, the people who are responsible for what Kenya is today. At the time of independence, the GDP per capita of this country was bigger than that of countries like Singapore – a country which became independent after Kenya. Twenty-five years after Singapore got independence, because of visionary and focussed leadership, the then Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, had pushed the GDP per capita of that country from a meagre US$400 to over US$12,000. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, our GDP per capita is less than US$1,000, yet the people responsible for the plunder and the misery that Kenya faces today are the ones who walk around with Order of the Moran of the Golden Heart, Order of the Burning Spear, et cetera . So, in so far as providing this framework is concerned, it is good that this Bill has come at the right time; but we need to be bold and be specific on the kinds of awards to be given to our heroes. Let us not be people who only praise our heroes once they die. Let the heroes enjoy the fruits of their labour when they still walk on the surface of this earth. Let their descendants also know that they come from a great family – a family of somebody who made a contribution in making Kenya to be known worldwide. With those remarks I support, but I will move amendments to some of the areas where I think provisions are inadequate, or are not bold enough to address the issue of Kenyan heroes in general."
}