Madaraka Day has come to Bungoma. As the poet, Jonathan Kariara would say, it is the coming of power. Every national notable and politico is in Western Kenya.
They have come to celebrate 60 years of internal self-determination. President Daniel Arap Moi always reminded us that Madaraka was the mother of Uhuru. Six months after June 1963, we made a majestic entry into independence, on 12th December. Jomo Kenyatta transitioned from Prime Minister to President. We began the journey to where we are today.
Occasions such as Madaraka are remarkable for the opportunity they give us to audit our performance. And performance audits are done against the objectives, roadmaps and outputs that we set for ourselves. At independence, the searchlight rested on eradicating poverty, ignorance and disease. The three enemies remain intact.
President Kenyatta often talked of building schools, as well as educating adults. Eradicating ignorance was understood as ending illiteracy. September 09 was celebrated as literacy day. People may be more literate today, but they remain ignorant, on Pavlovian conditioning by the political class.
Kenyatta dreamt of creating jobs, industries and of job opportunities in agriculture, and in industries. He grew cottage industries, and encouraged small-scale agriculture. He secured agriculture through minimum guaranteed returns schemes for farmers. Farmers associations thrived.
Kenyatta also built and equipped quality schools for quality learning. He developed middle level colleges and produced world class professionals from the University of Nairobi. He left behind a thriving economy in the Eldorado of East Africa. Africa envied Kenya. This was despite Jomo’s failure to imbue the people with the sense of nationhood. My institutional memory as a Kenyan citizen who was a young adult when Moi took over, recalls Moi’s sterling performance in the first four years. He built roads, industries, the country’s premier airport, energy, sports, hospital wards, Nyayo tea zones, and a state owned bus company.
In the period 1978 – 1982, we were asking ourselves where the money Moi was using to build a wonderful country had been in the Kenyatta years. It was the age of soil protection, afforestation, and a booming economy with motor vehicle assembly plants, textile industries, trains, and good schools. We were poised for greatness. We were getting rid of poverty, ignorance and disease.
But then we praised Moi so much that the acclaim went to his head. Were we not telling him that he was farmer number one, teacher number one, philosopher number one, all good things number one?
He became impatient with anyone who thought he was not number one. He cracked our skulls with the Nyayo club, if we did not toe the line. Then August 1 happened in 1982. And Moi was never the same again.
Skip Presidents Kibaki and Uhuru. Jump to 2024. We are doing badly! Poverty stares at you everywhere. We have expanded education to an explosion, without caring a hoot where the graduates will go. We have killed middle-level colleges and opened a plethora of universities that hugely produce pseudo-intellectuals. And we don’t know where to take them. Their only value is statistical bragging at parades like today’s in Bungoma. With its bottom-up clarion call, the William Ruto regime promised to be the game changer. It is set to enter its third year in the next three months, with nothing to show.
President Ruto operates in the image of a latter-day Vasco Da Gama, and Ethelred the Unready. He is a veritable globetrotter with loads of promises. “We intend to, we plan to, we have set aside, we shall, we will,” this is where he excels.
He risks entering his fourth year, in September next year, on a hapless and clueless wing. His poor choices and decisions are exacerbated by chronic political wrangling in his own corner. But the worst choice is the voracious show-biz character of the regime.
The globetrotting and show biz at home cost citizens oxygen itself. The present coming to Bungoma is an example of this show biz. A cash-strapped country that should live within its means splashes billions on celebrating national days.
To raise the billions for Vasco Da Gama activities, Ethelred will tax bread, impose a car circulation tax, and suffocate the bottom 45 million-plus Kenyans. He must also provide for malfeasance, and construction of luxurious personal empires in National and County governments. In future, simple ways of celebrating national days could be contemplated. A televised presidential address could suffice, with a cup of tea for a few guests.
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