How UhuRuto revived 'Iregi spirit' in Mount Kenya

President William Ruto and former President Uhuru Kenyatta after a meeting at State House, Nairobi. [File, Standard]

In the latter part of the 19th Century, imperial Britain grabbed the East African territory with a big mountain on the Equator, called Kirinyaga or Mount Kenya. Kirinyaga is the centre of spiritual inspiration to many people who live around it. At times, these people can be defiant, and currently appear to be in a defiance mode.

Defiance was often a result of things going wrong. It happened with the Iregi generation which rejected a ‘king’ and created consultative governance through councils. The mountain at times had prophets like Chege wa Kibiru who warned them of the looming danger of butterfly-looking people with their smoking sticks. The butterfly people created colonial Kenya which developed into a land of two conflicting societies, ‘White Man’s country’ and Mau Mau country.

The conflict between the two societies led to an anti-colonial war that jolted world attitude on colonialism. Africans, baptised ‘natives’, were made poor in order to supplement the luxuries that white people enjoyed. Subsequently, the pulverised ‘natives’ found inspiration in the Mountain where 'God reigned' and revived the Iregi spirit. In the process, spokesmen such as Harry Thuku and Jomo Kenyatta would arise to give hope and direction. This Iregi spirit partly accounted for the Mau Mau War in the 1950s which ushered in political independence for Kenya and prompted the colonised in other places to rise up. It happened in Southern Africa, according to South Africa’s Nelson Mandela and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, where the Mau Mau example made them to similarly mount liberation struggles.

Mau Mau had two post-colonial consequences that were in constant friction. First, colonial officials and their apologists resented and never forgave peoples of the Mountain for destabilising settler comfort. Having largely managed to grab political power in post-colonial Kenya, they expected obedience from the ruled even when they did not make sense. Second, the Iregi spirit lingered on and arouses senses of defiance when things appear to go wrong. Since things have seemed to go wrong in the last roughly seven years, the Iregi spirit in the Mountain has risen exponentially.

In the recent times, the Iregi spirit in the Mountain arose largely as an UhuRuto affair with their Kumi Kumi dream. In the Uhuru Kenyatta presidency, the Mountain complained of neglect, evictions at night during the Covid pandemic, destruction of businesses and related wealth at Nyama Kima and Gikomba, and of being assumed as 'Tumundu' to be bundled around. People reacted by turning against Uhuru and his candidate Raila Odinga, ignored Uhuru’s warnings that Ruto was not good, and largely voted for Ruto because they were unhappy with Uhuru. The vote was not against Raila, who had problems persuading people in the lake to vote for him; it was against Uhuru.

Ruto, probably with Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua on his side, misunderstood the vote as licence to do whatever he wanted because he received a Bible, the Constitution, and a Sword. It was a costly blunder because he appeared to re-arouse the same Iregi spirit that had fixed Uhuru. Besides removing Gachagua from office seemingly unfairly, stopping development projects such as roads, and the target firing of Mountain people sent bad signals. Placing what Ruto confessed were incompetent people in policymaking positions was organised disaster. It led to terrible tax policies that made people poorer than before. National sovereignty was seemingly surrendered, rising abductions and killings dismayed citizens, and such essential services as health and education plummeted as corruption sky-rocketed. Feeling the pain of all those negative policies, the Iregi spirit was revived not just in the Mountain but across the country.

The Mountain is currently confused and confusing. Although it turned against Ruto, some leaders keep on cheering. In Kiambu, some ‘leaders’ reportedly desire to split from the Mountain and create divisions. They are simply amusing and irrelevant. While dreaming in free Kenya is permitted, nightmares are not.