[ In Kenya, political elites across the spectrum are trying to
sell off the country for themselves—capitulation is inevitable.]
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WHO IS HUSTLING WHO?  
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Mukoma wa Ngugi
July 31, 2023
Africa is a Country
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_ In Kenya, political elites across the spectrum are trying to sell
off the country for themselves—capitulation is inevitable. _

, Photo by Bennett Tobias on Unsplash.

 

There should be no doubt that Kenya is in an intractable economic
crisis. Filling up gas for a drive from Nairobi to my hometown in
Limuru cost 10,000 ksh (about USD70). As a result of the high gas
costs prices for everything else have gone up, including public
transportation. And those who cannot hike up operating costs, such as
the hordes of _boda boda_ motorcycle taxis, are hardly making
anything or operating at a loss.

Tax hikes mean those who are employed are taking less money home. And
no point in kidding ourselves, in a corrupt country some of that money
being generated from the higher taxes is going to the politicians. As
will the promised 1 billion USD loan
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the IMF on whose behest the new austerity measures are being
implemented. It is a form of madness to think that a corrupt
government will only steal money generated by taxes and do public good
with the IMF loan. In short, in a country where close to half the
population lives on less than USD2 a day, Kenya is simply unaffordable
and the promise of relief is a lie—certainly a convenient lie for
the government and IMF officials but a devastating one for Kenya’s
majority poor.

My drive to Limuru happened on the first Wednesday (July 19) of the
protests. Everything was eerily quiet, Nairobi, renowned for its
traffic jams, was quiet. Matatus and buses were parked in their hubs.
Shops and stalls were closed. Even the hawkers that dot the roads and
highways stayed home. Save for the heavy police presence everywhere,
it felt like the country had come to a standstill.

We got to Kangemi shortly after the police had shot and wounded two
protestors—the road was strewn with stones and armed riot police
huddled by the side of the road waiting for the next wave of attacks
that never came. In the end, six people would be shot
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death throughout the country, and countless were injured and arrested.
Coming from the US, where police arrest protestors and shoot black
people, there were no surprises here. The US can hardly be the
standard of good policing or democratic practices, but the lives lost
simply for asking the government to center the people in its economic
planning seemed especially cruel.

But it was the emptiness of the roads that made the whole drive eerie.
Perhaps I was refracting what was happening in Kenya through what
followed the 1982 coup in which 240 people were killed; or the ethnic
clashes of the 1990s that culminated in the 2007 post-election
violence. Yet, there was a general agreement among people that there
was something different about the Kenya of today—that something was
already broken and the nightmares to come were slowly but surely
revealing themselves—like a bus carrying passengers and the driver
realizing the brakes were out just as it was about to descend a steep
hill.

Voting With the Middle Finger

But all this was predictable. President Ruto has been a known quantity
since the 1990s when he led the violent Moi youth wingers. He and his
running mate and later president, Uhuru Kenyatta, were brought in
front of the ICC to face charges of crimes against humanity following
the post-election violence in 2007. Some key witnesses disappeared
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others were intimidated into silence. Who in their right mind gives
evidence against those in control of the state? The ICC was already
discredited as being Western-crimes-against-humanity friendly (the US
has never been a signatory rightly afraid its former presidents, such
as George Bush, would be hauled before the court). The ICC eventually
withdrew
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case in March 2015.

I kept asking everyone I met, why was Ruto voted in spite of his
history? The answers varied: He rigged the elections; he did not rig
and if he did, he only managed to be better at it than Raila Odinga;
he appealed to the youth with the idea of building a hustler nation
(what a telling term); the Kikuyus have vowed never to have a Luo
president and therefore opted for Ruto who is Kalenjin as opposed to
Odinga who is Luo.

I sat with older Kikuyu men in the little _Nyama Choma_ spot in
Limuru Market and they talked about a generational divide between the
Kikuyu and youth (Ruto) and the elderly Kikuyus (Odinga). But the one
I heard over and over again was that Kenyans are tired of the Kenyatta
and Odinga political dynasties. As one Trump supporter was to say,
they voted for him with the middle finger. And so, the Kenyans who
voted for Ruto were giving a middle finger to the Kenyatta, Moi and
Odinga political dynasties. But no one had really expected buyer’s
remorse to kick in one year into the Ruto presidency.

I also asked about Odinga’s protests: what was the end game? One
theory is that he was looking at power-sharing, having done it once
before, following the 2007 elections. In our shorthand political
language, he was looking for another handshake. Some said the people
have a right to protest their government, and he is simply asking the
government to repeal the tax hikes and reinstate the fuel subsidies.
Others believed that he wants to be a genuine and useful voice of
opposition for the good of the country and its poor.

My own theory is that he is attempting a people-powered, centered,
democratic, and largely peaceful takeover—where people take to the
streets to overthrow an unpopular government. We saw this in Latin
America in the 2000s. In response to Odinga’s absence during the
three days of protests (he was sick), some leaders in his Azimio
party have started using this language
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The only problem with this strategy is that the sitting government has
to be wildly unpopular. Ruto still has a lot of support, meaning that
he does not have to compromise or give up power. It was to my mind
turning into a stalemate and I was worried that the state would
respond with more state-sponsored violence.

But real economics broke the stalemate. In a country where people are
barely surviving and the majority are poor without savings to rely on,
or relatives to reach out to for help, the hawkers, small stall and
shop owners simply went back to work. In other words, those that would
have been hurt the most by three days of protests (a day at home
literally means a day without food for the family) simply went back to
work, and the _matatus _and buses hummed back to life, slowly on
Thursday and full throttle by Friday.

Saturday around Westlands might as well have been as busy as a Monday
as people overcompensated for lost time to either sell or shop. If the
protests were going to succeed the opposition (composed of some of the
wealthiest families in Kenya, including Odinga’s) really should have
thought about how best to protect those who would be the most
affected. They should find legal and innovative ways to put their
money where their political mouths are.

 

Cuba as Kenya’s North Star

Odinga had to change tactics
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called for a day of protest against police violence instead of
three-day weekly protests in perpetuity. He is now in danger of
turning into a caricature of his old revolutionary self and becoming
an Al Sharpton, who instead of protesting the American government for
the police killings of black people, protests the police themselves
leaving the government feeling sanctimonious. Obama or Biden could
weigh in, in righteous indignation without offering any real change
(remember Obama’s emotional pleas over gun shootings and police
shootings as if he was not the one occupying the most powerful office
in the US)?

The one question that keeps eating at me is this: why is the most
apparent outcome at the time a surprise later? Ruto was always going
to sell off Kenya with a percentage for himself and his friends.
Odinga was always going to capitulate. The end result is that the
Kenyan bus will continue to careen on without brakes. So, what is to
be done?

I was in Cuba earlier this year. I got a sense of the same desperation
I felt in Kenya but the difference is Cubans have free access to
healthcare, education, housing, and food security. They have free
access to all the things that make basic survival possible. Before
calling for the tax hikes and cutting fuel subsidies might it not have
been more prudent to have a safety net for Kenyans? Would that not
have been the most logical thing? But of course not, Ruto is acting at
the behest of the IMF and big money. Ruto has learned the art of
pan-African political rhetoric. Abroad he can call for a different
non-US-centered economic system and castigate the French president
over paternalism but at home, his politics are hustler politics.

Life in Cuba is difficult, as a result of relentless sanctions from
the US,  but it is far from impossible. It remains the north star for
those who understand discussions around fundamental change as the only
starting point. We can have arguments about the nature of those
fundamental changes, but we can all agree we should not be a country
where one family, say the Kenyatta family, owns more than half a
million acres of land
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Or where, as Oxfam reported
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four individuals hold more wealth than that held by 22 million
Kenyans. The kind of politics that begin with a necessity for
fundamental change will obviously not come from Ruto.

But one hopes it can still come from the Odinga camp.  Or even
better, from a genuinely progressive people-powered movement that has
inbuilt questions of fundamental change in its political, economic,
and cultural platform.

In spite of the empty roads, Limuru Market was thriving and Wakari Bar
kept its reputation as one of the best places for _Nyama Choma_ and
for lively political conversations. People are paying attention, after
all, it is their lives and livelihoods on the line. Politicians,
especially those in the opposition and the political left should
listen as well.

_Mukoma Wa Ngugi is a professor of literatures in English at Cornell,
author of The Rise of the African Novel and the novels, Unbury Our
Dead with Song and Nairobi Heat._

_Africa Is a Country is a site of opinion, analysis, and new writing
on and from the African left. It was founded by Sean Jacobs
[[link removed]] in 2009. Unless otherwise noted, all
the content on Africa Is a Country is published under a Creative
Commons [[link removed]] license._

 

* Kenya
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* neo-colonialism
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* neo-liberalism
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* Inequality
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