Our retired chiefs live the life of kings

By PETER WANYONYI

When you become an African president, the whole world is your stage, whether you lord it over 40 million souls — like Kenya — or you bestride a country with a couple million sorry souls, you are still the ultimate boss.

In fact, it is only in Africa that a president can actually take over someone else’s spouse quite legally. What would the average African man have done if Idi Amin had taken a liking to the poor man’s wife, other than hurry up and deliver the lucky sweetheart to State House Nakasero?

When you are African, you quickly internalise the truth that while we are equal, some of us — individuals, villages, tribes, coalitions — are more equal than others.

And nowhere is this truer than in retirement. Ordinary Africans retire penniless and then spend money they don’t have chasing a pittance of a pension from a mean employer who won’t even acknowledge that the pension is owed. By the time the pension cash begins coming through, the African mwananchi is a couple years from his grave, exhausted, bitter and vengeful.

In his naivety, he believes he can exact revenge on the government of the day by voting it out of power at the next elections. But that is something that never comes to pass because African governments, in their wisdom, have taken Henry Kissinger’s acerbic aphorism to heart; that democracy is too important to be left to the people. Elections must be guided towards a predetermined outcome.

Fat pensions

But compare the peasant’s retirement to that of an African president. Retired African presidents live large, comfortable lives. They get fat pensions — the sort of money that can build several dams and hospitals in bedraggled villages deep in Bungoma.

The story doesn’t stop there. Retired President Kibaki, fresh from moving into a palatial Sh500 million-retirement residence, will, if media reports are to be believed, shortly receive an office costing a whooping Sh700 million. That, by the way, is just what the bean counters call ‘capital expenditure’. It doesn’t include the running costs of the staff that will mill around the retired Chief.

Scheming

A whole secretariat churning out one or two statements a year, an entire library complete with a librarian and real, actual books, a bunch of cooks to cater to bring him his tea and stewed ingokho (chicken) and of course, highly trained watchmen to ensure he stays safe, what with the crime rate in Kenya.

Throw in juicy shillings in form of an entertainment allowance at the gold club and you begin to get the ire that former Vice-president Kalonzo Musyoka must be feeling, having gone home with pretty much nothing himself.

Life can be very unfair. If you want a Sh500 million house, you have to be president first. Not even vice-presidents will do.

In fact, if Deputy President William Ruto knows what’s good for him, he needs to whip out his notepad right now and start scheming for the big job, or he will find himself penniless in retirement.