We should actualise the ideals that Rev Jackson resolutely stood for

Rev Jesse Jackson joins Nairobi Girls Chorale in Chicago on June 4, 2016. [File, Standard]

Rev Jesse Jackson, the man who led the US Civil Rights movement after Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in 1968, died last week aged 84 years.

In 1984 and 1988, Jackson put up spirited fights for the US presidency, and I recall rooting for him to win and become the first black president of America. He didn't make it, but he will be remembered for what he stood for;  justice, equality, human dignity, accountability, and the belief that the arc of the moral universe, however long, must bend toward justice.

Jackson built his life and career on the conviction that no government has the right to prey upon its own people, that the poor and the young deserve a fighting chance, and that power, however intoxicating, is answerable to those who confer it.

What would Jackson make of Kenya today? His Rainbow Coalition was premised on the unity of the marginalised against systems that trample on ordinary citizens for the benefit of a privileged few. He believed in the sanctity of human life, the right of every young person to employment and a dignified future, and the absolute imperative that those in power must account for everything.

Unfortunately, Kenya is the antithesis of everything Jackson fought for, starting with extra-judicial killings. The 2024 abductions and enforced disappearances of government critics, civil society activists, and youth who raised their voices during the Gen Z protests are a serious indictment of a government at peace weaponising the security services against its own citizens, who it should protect. When the bodies of abducted youth wash up in rivers, that speaks to state terror.

Then there is corruption whose tentacles reach into every ministry, parastatal, and procurement department. Former President Uhuru Kenyatta conceded that Kenya loses Sh2 billion to corruption daily. The Auditor General has, year after year, documented theft of public funds running into billions, yet not one significant figure has been prosecuted, convicted, and jailed.

Accountability in Kenya is reserved for lesser mortals. The powerful steal in broad daylight, secure that nothing would happen to them. Youth unemployment is the cruellest indictment of all. Thousands of young Kenyans graduate each year into a job market that has no room for them. These are the young people the government criminalised for demanding better governance. Jackson's entire political philosophy was built around giving the young a future. In Kenya, the young are given tear gas and unmarked graves.

Human rights? Political persecution? Ask Mumias East MP Peter Salasya, arrested over allegations of hate speech while those whose inflammatory utterances about elections remain untouched and untouchable.

George Orwell's warning in Animal Farm, that some animals are more equal than others, has never felt more Kenyan. An overbearing Executive continues to swallow institutions whole. CSs treat Parliament with contempt, honouring summons only when it suits them.

The transfer of the Public Seal from the Attorney General's office to the Head of Public Service is the kind of creeping consolidation of power that turns republics into kleptocracies. Parliament, which should be the last line of defence for Kenyans, has been reduced to a rubber stamp.

Compounding these are the twin cankers of tribalism and nepotism. Appointments to key public positions mirror the ethnic arithmetic of those in power rather than merit. In Kenya where tribe determines access to opportunity, Jackson's rainbow coalition is a laughable dream. A just nation cannot be built on the foundation of ethnicity and cronyism. Jackson understood that a nation is only as strong as its most vulnerable citizen; that when the state brutalises the poor, silences dissent, and rewards loyalty over competence, it is plunder.

The government would do well to remove the blinkers of political convenience, and examine the direction in which it is herding this country. Millions of Kenyans go to bed hungry, afraid, and without hope. Creating a just state, one where the law applies equally, the youth have jobs, human rights are not negotiable, corruption is punished, is not an opposition agenda, it is the baseline of civilised governance.