A paradigm shift in Kenya's brand of politics is needed

Residents of Ganda in Kilifi queue to vote at Maziwani Primary School in the Malindi parliamentary by-election on March 7, 2016. PHOTO | KAZUNGU SAMUEL | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, the Auditor-General’s office, and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions are pyramid schemes, avenues of wasting public funds for no good return.

  • We should delete them from the law, subject their leadership to public whipping, and invite the Njuri Ncheke to bring back the ritual hot stone, called 'ikama', which is the most effective way of killing thieves known to man.

Kenyan politics is bankrupt. There have not been any new ideas for almost a decade. Some might wear round-neck jackets, but on the ideological scale, they are no more leftist than the reactionaries on the right.

The top cream of Kenyan society bears some striking behavioural similarities, too: they are children of affluence. They love the good life, late nights, and good whisky. With the exception of a few, our cream of politicians have problems with a workday that starts earlier than 10am. That is not a bad thing; I am a night owl too. Some are lazy and of weak character.

Our politicians do not have competing visions for the country, assuming of course that they have any visions at all. They do not have alternative ways of organising society and applying its resources for the benefit of the people. All appear to be motivated to go into leadership out of the same instincts and circumstances: family or community pressure, a desire for personal and ethnic advancement, a bit of nationalism, protection of self, family, and ethnic community, and the searing greed to acquire humongous amounts of money to buy homes in Monaco and create a political and financial dynasty.

In Kenya there are no communists, no socialists, no capitalists, no social democrats, no anarchists, no nativists. In the place where ideology is supposed to reside, there is a neat hole. Our politics is based on no values, just instinct, personal character, and the needs of the moment. There is nothing in our politics for our people to believe in. That is why they have been reduced to believing in personalities, tribes, tribal jingoism, and their own stomachs. It is a value-free political system.

Political manifestos are hollow documents generated by cynical experts. They are written with the intention of pulling wool over the eyes of the people and thereby get their votes. Some read like a collection of deals and money-making ventures. In Kenyan politics, few believe in anything altruistic or noble. It is the most dishonest enterprise in the whole world.

WEALTH ACQUISITION

I used to think there are politicians who believed in wealth creation and others who believed in its distribution. I was wrong. They are all in the business of its acquisition.

Criticism does not constitute policy. Kenyan politicians think that it wins them popularity if they are harshly critical of the government. They think it gives them street cred, especially if they do not have Nyayo House pedigree. This is 1990s thinking.

What Kenyan politics desperately needs is not a messiah. It is a massive paradigm shift. It needs a package of fresh ideas that can ignite the patriotism of the people, get them to make sacrifices for their country again, make them proud of themselves and their place in the world. No amount of corruption, ambition, and knee-jerk criticism can achieve that. Tribalism and a sense of ethnic injury might, but that is a dangerous game for which, in the long term, there are really no winners.

I was looking at possible Cabinet picks in the Donald Trump administration. The median age seemed to be 70, quite a number are tycoons without experience of government. None is from ethnic minorities, and Sarah Palin appears to be one of only a handful of women under consideration. America appears to have transported itself to an age of white old men who are rabidly conservative and possibly quite a few racists too. Has America moved forward or backwards?

It is not the kind of change needed in Kenyan politics. What we need are politicians who can think, adapt ideology to our needs, and be able to communicate honestly with the population.

Even more important, we have this kind of dishonest politics because Kenyans themselves are crooks. That is why they go for a regular haircut at the offices of pyramid schemes and that is why university students, who should know better, are selling their lab coats to go and gamble.

Our instinctive greed robs us of the power of reason. And it is ruining our lives. To fix our politics, we might have to panel beat ourselves first.

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The folks in charge of investigating corruption are conning us. They tell us they are questioning so-and-so and he is called in dramatically and photographed by the media. Then the prosecutor, equally dramatically, declares that he is charging this number of very bad people.

Then after a merry dance of adjournments, injunctions, constitutional references, and so on, the cases are quietly smothered with a pillow. So, hundreds of people go to work every day, burn hundreds of millions of good shillings in salaries and other costs, but do not do their jobs — put bad people in jail.

The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, the Auditor-General’s office, and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions are pyramid schemes, avenues of wasting public funds for no good return. We should delete them from the law, subject their leadership to public whipping, and invite the Njuri Ncheke to bring back the ritual hot stone — called ikama — the most effective way of killing thieves known to man. 

[email protected]; @mutuma_mathiu