THE MAKING OF A KAKISTOCRACY
The struggle of ousting Kenyatta 1 and Moi were born out of disapproval by civil servants including the military, at a time where the state was the largest employer. Interestingly, it bore fruit.
Authoritarianism starts by first engrossing the educated middle class into its fold. If they resist, these attempts, they then will be investigated for trumped up charges until they admit to work with regime of the day. Ideally, citizens are left as orphans of that merger.
At this stage in life, I would argue that we let Raila do what he is doing. There are millions who know what (demos) it has done; including letting your parents educate you, except that some of you have decided to insult the very education through your posts.
As a country, we have come from a system where governments provide equipment to free schools, to a system where you pay for fees then equip the schools to guide you on how to teach your own children. Ideally, we stare at very oppressive and broken institutions across the country, from a broken legal system to a defective legislature. Independent institutions have been reduced into an appendage of the executive.
All these things are a result of crooked governance that starts with skewed elections. It is a dangerous precedent of self-sabotage to assume that letting rigging of electoral thrive benefits your tribe. It doesn’t. It never has. Check with your history.
Presidents get into power and punish even their own tribesmen. Tabitha Seii and Alexander Muge’s families who were persecuted by a perceived tribesman at the helm are proof of this. The same happens to JM Kariuki in Kenyatta’s reign. Even more recently Ngugi wa Thiongo was robbed, and his wife sexually assaulted over a transition period between two Kikuyu presidencies. Those were his tribesmen, including the suspects. So, what lessons do we draw from such?
If the leadership is rotten, your tribe is not rotten. So, stop thinking that if your kin are in the presidency, you too are president. Get your act together and fight for what is right for you and your children now and in the future. Do not struggle to defend injustice, for injustice to your countrymen is an injustice to you and to your future generation.
Most of the things you are protecting in Ruto are the kind that triggered Mau Mau rebellion amongst the Kikuyus. Only that they were perpetrated by a White man and so you had a common enemy to unite the country.
Your tribal leaders who you now praise for following Ruto and receiving plum jobs that do not even exist in government, (MUSALIA MUDAVADI) were what Mau Mau considered traitors of the cause and they banished them and their families.
It is time you treat your country like you would if a foreigner was at the helm and was giving you Ksh. 475 to liberate you from poverty. Or was appointing suspects or undedicated persons to lead you. Or freeing prisoners to come lead you as it has been the case in the past few months under William Ruto’s presidency.
Yes, you are absolutely right. What your country needs now are not streets protests. But it has never needed them even before until things were too comfortable for Kenyatta 1 and Moi to oppress you. Then the country needed the protests. If you let Ruto feel comfortable, if you allow him the space to mutilate the constitution, tilt laws to favor those in power with him and oppress those he does not love then we will need more than protests,
Another most painful thing to watch is a population that is oppressed and doesn’t even know that it is being oppressed. Or a population that simply accepts it as part of leadership. It is not and it will never be.
If you read the body language of both Ruto and Gachagua you can see that although Gachagua is reckless and playing domestic wizardry, Ruto is alive to the fact that his illegitimacy is showing, and Kenya is a global unit bigger than the Bomas charades that were overseen by Chebukati and later rubber stamped by a broken judiciary.
So yes, we play here and call each other names, but the question our children will ask is where we were when Ruto and anyone else in that category were taking the country in the direction they found it. Yes, you were just posting about it!
Take your country in the direction that your children and grandchildren will be proud of. Make it work by being patriotic of the kind of leadership you want. You will not make the country successful by insulting anyone who challenges the status quo.
Yes, the coins you get pay your bills, but is that coin what your parents envisioned you earning when they took you to school? Is that the best representation of all your life’s experience? Are there people from your school doing better than you? And what explains the fact that they are doing better than you in the same country?
Crowd mentality is good. But there is no better crowd than one that is educated not just about its past but also the potential for its future. Make noise and shout for coins. But make your country great for your scions. You owe them a good country.
While on this, let me draw attention to folks equating Raila’s quest for a change to Luo’s desire for development. The Kikuyu and Kalenjin presidency since Moi is because of Raila’s push against dictatorship against a nation. Not Luos, it has never directly favored the Lake region.
Mature Kenyans will not see or buy the argument that Raila does what he does for Luos. It is only the immature ones who have eaten their bread buttered because Raila curbed Moi’s exigencies.
To those who make noise without history, Nyanza has never expected Raila to do them any personal favors. Nyanza draws its favor from a working Kenya and for which Raila and his peers fought. Luo Nyanza has deliberately been strangled for decades. Like a boxer fighting with one arm the town still managed to grow into a marvelous port City.
Let us not be ignorant of our history. History teaches us that the Mau Mau fought hard for Kenya. If people disregarded their fight as a mere tribal quest, they would all have been exterminated bumpy the British men and women.
Stand up for your rights, your neighbors’ right and the right of your future generations. Defend your country with all you got because the democracy you see in Kenya today was not built by apologists. Let's not allow apologists to destroy what others have paid for with their own blood!
We have to take up the role to defend our country, our rights and our democracy because the institutions vested with this noble duty are all broken or not functional. Like it is our case, we have no Parliament worth taking about. What we have is a political party disguised as Parliament! Zero objectivity and Very little capacity to critically unpack the dangers of a growing democracy.
Kenyans, it is up to you!
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