|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
One has to give it to President Ruto. Two years to an election and his dominance of the political scene seems unchallenged by all formal processes and institutions. An uprising of disenchanted youthful Kenyans called the “Gen Z” last year is the only formation he has been unable to subdue to his whims. Politically, he has successfully swallowed up the most experienced elements of the opposition and those who can’t be bought are intimidated or disappear into the bowels of a system that last persisted in such virulent form prior to the reintroduction of political pluralism. The outpourings of sycophantic bile from the regime’s most committed adherents are amusing when not also so worrying in their portents. Ironically, one of the Kenya Kwanza regime’s most articulate and venomous adherents – in a true indication of the scale of difference a mere year makes in politics – is today the doyen of the opposition he once sneered at and castigated – Mr Rigathi Gachagua.
In another great irony, the steadfast chameleon-like qualities of Kenya’s politicians are part of the reason for our much-vaunted stability as a nation. In a country where yesterday’s foes are today’s political friends, it is difficult to sustain any project that changes things fundamentally. Conversely though, when the politicians disagree violently, blood flows. It is thus that Mr Gachagua went from pouring vitriol on the regime’s perceived foes to joining them in the trenches and seeking to lead them. That this kind of transition can take place should be good for democracy but – as Americans are discovering even as we speak – democracy has become a rather more cynical thing. But that’s a story for another day.
Gachagua “in the zone”
Part of President Ruto’s thus far successful strategy seems to be built on exploiting an old and potent cleavage in our politics – the anxiety among non-Gĩkũyũ Kenyans about Gĩkũyũ hegemony. His political tutor Daniel arap Moi mastered this strategy and for decades it was one of those that kept his opponents at bay and disorganised. Ruto took power at the end of a 20-year run of Gĩkũyũ presidents in Kenya. And he was elected heavily by the Gĩkũyũ. The lovefest was brief though – also a story for another day.
Still, what Mr Ruto seems to be banking on is that by the middle of 2027 non-Gĩkũyũ Kenyan voters will be mobilised on the basis that their alarm about potential Gĩkũyũ hegemony supersedes their revulsion for his corrupt regime. “Vote for me or the Kiuks will take the presidency again!”, is a compelling narrative in some circles. If he can pull off this manoeuvre then he’ll have the election in the bag by a bigger margin than in 2022. In another irony, it seems to be a strategy dependent in part on the political flourishing of one Rigathi Gachagua, the former Deputy President who fell out with his boss the president catastrophically last year. For Mr Gachagua is the most vehemently Gĩkũyũ of Gĩkũyũs and regularly makes a spectacle of luxuriating in his specific cultural condition. There is no crime in this, for a person who does not know where they come from is lost. Still, the world has in recent years become a friendlier place to this kind of politics and, from the US to Hungary to Israel and India, it is doing very well. But in the past Mr Gachagua championed what sounded very much like an ethnically exclusive agenda. His continuous harping on around this reveals him to be a man in the zone: he has created his own political reality and in it the tribes are definitely not equal. In this space he speaks as if consumed by the warm fuzziness of a religious adherent at once exulting in his rightness and feeling pity for all those not lucky enough to be him.
Speaking in Kericho on 19 February 2023, Mr Gachagua was reported to have said, “This government is a company that has shares. There are owners who have the majority of shares, and those with just a few, while others do not have any. You invested in this government and you must reap. You sowed, tilled, put manure and irrigated, and now it is time to reap.” These words have and will likely haunt him for some time.
I was away for some months and once back, the one thing I found striking in my very unscientific soundings of attitudes regarding our leading political figures was the stark divide in regard to Mr Gachagua. To many, especially those from his own ethnic group, he is the increasingly relevant figure who was wronged by a ruthless and dishonest President Ruto who never made a promise he intended to keep. Mr Gachagua also seems particularly popular with the traditional media which is understandable given his penchant for a steady stream of quotable quips and statements. But on the other hand, I have had difficulty even at very mixed social events to find any non-Gĩkũyũ singing Mr Gachagua’s praises. Maybe I have been hanging around with the wrong people.
Gen Z resist the tribal arithmetic
All said, however, the template of tribal arithmetic is yesterday’s game being forced on a youthful population that last year took to the streets in an uprising that has totally transformed the Kenyan idea of what’s possible. The political elite regrouped furiously but what the Gen Z did last year militates against the way Kenyan politics is currently prosecuted. It is clear now that the Gen Z’s who challenge government on social media and on the streets are largely leaderless, refuse to conform to the tribal politics of elected leaders, include more young women than any other protest movement in Kenyan history, and, most importantly, present a moral not a political challenge to a head of state who cut his teeth on the craven ruthlessness and greed of Youth for Kanu ’92 and has never upgraded. This isn’t surprising, perhaps because the disciplined and tireless politics of wheeling, dealing, bullshitting and killing has been fantastically successful as a stratagem to power and riches in Kenya. In 2022 it is clear that this youthful demographic also refused to obey the entreaties of their perceived tribal leaders and most ironically voted for Ruto – those who voted at least.
And so, Kenya is caught in the middle of a curious struggle as we head into 2027 – caught between the method of conducting politics through ethnic mobilisation, lies and bribes on the one hand, and what the Gen Z seem to be demanding, which is the very opposite of the current order. I remain inspired by the young lady Mercy Tarus, a proud Gen Z, who rose to fame after she publicly challenged the Uasin Gishu governor Jonathan Bii, his deputy John Barorot, and Senator Jackson Mandago over the Finland scholarship scam in 2023. Her success in capturing the imagination of Kenyans was not just because she spoke with courage to power while still in her early 20s but also that she did so as a resident of the Rift Valley and a member of the president’s ethnic group. Apart from more lies, hired goons, bribes and violence, our current rulers don’t have a coherent response to this reality.
