On the day the world was celebrating International Women’s Day, a man whose words and actions have proved time and again to be the antithesis of the values espoused by the day quietly flew into Kenya from Dar es Salaam.
Quiet, because his entry lacked the usual aplomb that’s the hallmark of visits by any celebrity. In any case, the flashy Congolese soukus singer, dancer, producer, and composer Koffi Olomide is certainly not a man used to quiet entries.
On his last visit in 2016, he was caught on video kicking a woman believed to be one of his dancers in the full glare of cameras and police officers, causing a public outcry. The Kenyan government acted swiftly, bundling him out of the country faster than his legion of fans could shout Ekotitee!
The musician, who is also known as Grand Mopao or Mopao Mokonzi, is no stranger to controversy and has had a long, intimate relationship with violence against women.
In the same year that he was kicked out of the country, he issued a belated apology on video three months later, asking Kenyans to forgive him for he is only a human being. He added that it was the boldest thing he had ever done and it went against the expectations of people who did not imagine he would apologise because, well, he is a superstar.
Fast forward to 2020 and it seems like the naysayers in 2016 were right. He apologised yet again for the incident during a media briefing but also proceeded to blame the photographer in 2016 for “not filming the whole incident” and added that he (Koffi) had “suffered an injustice”.
When you boil down to precisely what’s wrong with the words “suffered injustice”, it’s fairly simple: Koffi does not understand or appreciate the meaning of an apology. Because such dangerous words don’t express regret in any manner or form.
Someone should tell Koffi that the word apology does not have a “but” and that self-victimisation is not a synonym of an apology. Someone should also tell him that there’s no justification on earth that’s sufficient for inflicting violence on a woman. And that whether it’s a man or a woman, the person on the receiving end of violence is the victim and not vice versa.
As a general rule, remorse is best served plain, without being garnished by convoluted explanations or whining.
Koffi is lucky that forgiveness and selective amnesia are two of the languages best spoken in Kenya.
This is an appropriate time to mention that in 2019, Koffi Olomidé was found guilty of the statutory rape of one of his former dancers when she was 15 and handed a two-year suspended jail sentence.
As is often the case when dealing with celebrities and their misdemeanours, it’s difficult to dislodge them from the pedestals where we’ve put them so this “little” fact has hardly formed any background material in the dozens of articles written about his return to Kenya.
But the crooner is also benefitting from the culture of silence in matters of violence against women, something that a recent report by Truecaller on sexual harassment indicated. The report said that nine out of 10 women face harassment over the phone but only two out of 10 take action. Perhaps what the report did not mention was that these women are weighed down by the shame and stigma of it all, which are all too familiar negative feelings for those whose lives have been touched by violence of different natures.
In some cases, the victim becomes the villain in an extraordinary twist of words and events.
Koffi’s half-hearted apology must be called out for what it is: An insult to women and all efforts to contain violence against them.
Hypnotic as his music is, let’s not be swayed by the illusion that a star can’t be blemished.
We are grateful to Koffi, though, for he has shown the world what an apology should not look like. And we can only hope that he will never mistake a woman for a football again.
