Youths take part at the Uhuru Park grounds in Nairobi County during the Gen Z Memorial concert honour of those killed during anti-tax protests on July 7, 2024. PHOTO | FILE | NMG
There is a revolt in Kenya against a fundamentally broken system. This system is not accidental. It’s not a result of vagaries of international events or quirks of history.
The system is deliberately designed to underwrite fabulous lifestyles of the political class, their families and cronies. In this system, state assets are just instruments of patronage. State jobs are used to reward sycophancy or buy tribal loyalty. Development projects are used to bribe a region for political support.
With no effective systems to check negligence or corruption, a state job becomes a means to accumulate wealth.
Service delivery takes a back seat as a scramble for the country’s resources begins. Those standing in the way of this mad rush are shipped out of the system. Only those who facilitate “the gravy train” are retained or promoted. The result is dilapidated schools, hospitals and infrastructure. The system produces billionaire politicians and millions of poor unemployed youth.
Recently, we saw ministers boasting about their expensive watches and clothes on TV, instead of what they had done to transform lives.
Even though the Ruto-Gachagua regime is particularly excessive, the truth is that no regime, even the more enlightened Mwai Kibaki regime, seriously endeavoured to fundamentally change the system.
The exploitative system is protected by a ruthless and murderous police force. We got a glimpse of the character of the police during the youth revolt against the system. Snipers picking off unarmed youthful protesters, hooded police death squads, abductions, forced disappearances and executions were part of its modus operandi.
While the political class relies on the police to protect the status quo, it also uses cynical tribal manipulation. Part of this manipulation involves appointing a member of this or that ethnic group to a state position and then presenting the appointment as a great favour to the community. It does not matter whether the appointed person is a thief or not. And yet, ridiculous as it may sound, people, even intellectuals, buy this cynical absurdity.
Even in the midst of a serious revolt against the rotten system, William Ruto is still trying to use the same treacherous trickery to stem the tidal wave of revolt. After firing and reappointing cabinet secretaries, Mr Ruto went around to various communities presenting his new and recycled picks as favours to the communities.
We saw impoverished community members profusely thanking the president for giving them a CS. How community members, even after years of experiencing otherwise, still think that having one of their own as a CS will transform their lives remains a mystery to political analysts and boon for the rotten political class.
However, the Gen-Z have seen through this ethnic manipulation and rejected it. They are demanding appointment purely on merit and integrity, regardless of ethnicity. Hopefully, we will all recognise which vision — Ruto’s or Gen-Z’s — seeks to keep us imprisoned in tribal nationalism that helps to perpetuate a broken system and which seeks to free us.
Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator
