By JENERALI ULIMWENGU

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Observing the very public falling out between Kenya’s President William Ruto and his deputy president, Rigathi Gachagua, has given rise to one of the eerie feelings that this is just another of those cases where it has been said that the more it changes the more it is the same thing, or the more it stays the same.

In a way, it is a terrible and demobilising sentiment that could get people throwing their arms up and saying there is no point in trying to change the set of circumstances one is grappling with, since nothing of real essence can be transformed, and all efforts deployed with change as a target are doomed to failure.

It is a fatalistic injunction that inspires one to resignation, and discourages proactive engagement with one’s problems, doubting the meaning of struggle and belittling the value of effort.

In the particular case of Kenya’s politics – not very different from what obtains in all our former British territories of yesteryear (Uganda, Tanganyika, Kenya), we know what kind of politics has been played out since independence in the 1960s, with minimal variations.

The vast amount of our politics is naturally ethnically based; “naturally” because there has been precious little effort invested in the cultivation of a politics that obeys imperatives and constructs that look beyond the “natural” ethno-linguistic straightjacket.

Here, I use the word “straightjacket,” which suggests serious limitation, although the ethno-linguistic entity is already a higher conceptual and organisational idea than that of the purely individual/personal frame.

An explication is in order here: Closer to the Athenian model of government, each one of us would have had to personally attend every week’s townhall where all our problems would be discussed.

Because we do not live in the vicinity of a townhall, we opt for representative governance system, which means we choose people who will go to governing councils on our behalf and treat on our behalf, and because we do not have much knowledge of people who live far from where we are, we tend to choose our kin as our representatives.

These, mostly, are those who talk like we do and eat the same animal and/or the same relish as we eat. That is to say, we have nothing more sophisticated to govern our relations than that.

Indeed, beyond what we have as natural— the starch or protein we ingest, maybe the totem we identify with — a lot of synthesisation is called for before we can bond into a political (and later, governance) expression as a community or a nation: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania.

Most of our countries in Africa have not risen above what I am describing, so our political expression will be stated at this particular point.

When we hear expressions like “tyranny of numbers,” it is not the numbers of PhDs, or of mathematicians, or of progressive industrialists; it is the numbers of groups whose starch staple, or the animal protein, is the same. “We eat matooke, not sorghum” etc. Sometimes this kind of talk throws into the equation certain body anatomy that needs incision: “He has not cut, so he can’t be …”

So, it is very basic, rudimentary, natural, as I said earlier. With some sophistication, the protagonists will be more preoccupied with AI and Chat-GPT, climate change and whether Palestine should be wiped off the face of the earth, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to think. But for now, we are not there, we are still in the boondocks as far as our political thinking goes.

Therefore, talk about Gachagua — it could be anyone in our region— breaching the constitution, dabbling in corruption and embezzlement, such as the deputy president is accused of will not hold water, because, you see, what about this one and that other one, who have been doing the same thing many times over, but you are only seeing this one? It must be because he does not eat your tribe of squirrel!

This kind of thinking is made worse by the feeling that when one of ours has earned his/her place at the table, all of us “go chop”.

It is not true. I know many activities where people represent others and do it effectively.

This includes warfare, where our gallant sons and daughters go into battle and die for us, and a number of other activities where selflessness and sacrifice are singular and appreciated attributes, recognised in only a few amongst us.

But these do not include those occasions when people are going to eat, which is very personal.

So, those who harbour the “it’s our turn to eat” ethos, may be disappointed in the end, for politicians have never cared for anyone but themselves and their families, a little.

In the end, the people of Mount Kenya are going to throw in their lot with “their” man, whether they can accompany him to the table or not. What I know is that Gachagua is fighting for his political life, not for their livelihoods.

As for the projected impeachment, it could drag on into the end of Gachagua’s term and become moot, of no effect whatsoever.