As woes pile up, don't forget that Kenya's fate lies in our hands

Gen-Z protests in Kakamega on July 2, 2024. [File, Standard]

That Kenya has been through some pretty difficult political moments cannot be gainsaid. You would think it’s us that prophet Isaiah had in mind when he said, “And confusion shall reign in their midst.”

However, the unity of purpose that has emerged between the poor and the middle class, as Eric Hoffer predicts in his book, is to date the finest political gift to this country. It has effectively extinguished the many foreign trips that had become a source of worry, instead of hope, to many Kenyans. The US trip and the Finance Bill will be remembered for how they made the country snap into wakefulness. It took an insolent government spokesman who rained insults on a citizen for questioning the logic of flying private while we have the national carrier.

But before the Washington trip, the country had been enraged by allegations of the fertiliser scandal. Investigations by a leading journalist placed the responsibility squarely at the doorstep of the relevant minister. At a time when we had hoped to see the commencement of the war against corruption, Kenya Kwanza and its leadership chose the path of political ingenuity to shield the same Cabinet Secretary from accountability; a veritable theatre of the absurd.

It had took the Gen Z revolution for the said minister to bear his cross. We then quickly parachuted into the era of abductions and disappearances. Then came the Adani deal. Now we are grappling with news of an acting Inspector General of Police disobeying court orders.

I went into all these regurgitation to underscore the wisdom of William Shakespeare in the play Julius Caesar when one of the characters Caius Cassius says “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in us”. If we are to blame anyone else for the experiences we are going through in the present moment, it’s certainly not the gods. We have let ourselves to ride the back of the tiger for so long. If we don’t do better by ourselves, we might end up in its belly.

The reigning disillusionment is certainly a recipe for rage. But rage that is not backed with both tactics and strategy would be worse than useless. To chant #RutoMustGo is not enough. By the way Ruto must go and to go he will. But not now. A time is coming when we are going to scrutinise his vision for this country through microscopic eyes. We will ask ourselves the question that voters in every society should ask itself whenever it goes to the ballot: Are our lives better than before the last election?

We will weigh the oft-spewed rhetoric against hard economic realities and there in our answer will lie. The big question then is what do we do between now and then? The answer is found in part, in the preamble of our Constitution.”Recognising the aspirations of all Kenyans for a government based on the essential values of human rights, equality, freedom, democracy, social justice and the rule of law”. But recognising these essential values does not mean they are self executing. It should instead fill us with the courage to live the words of Fredrick Douglass when he said that the limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

I say courage because the status quo has a way of inspiring fear among the people. It may take the form of disappearance and eventual death like that of the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology student Denzel Omondi. It may take the attempted assassination of character as they have tried with Morara Kebaso. It may take the form of pointblank shooting like it happened to Rex Maasai and Thomas Joseph Mboya before him.

In the midst of these threats, real or imagined, we the people must invest heavily in public participation. We must scrutinise the actions of our government. Right to access information must mean something. Professing smooth patriotism will have us all lose our country in the hands of the agents of global monopoly capitalists.

Mr Mwaga is the convener of Inter-parties Youth Forum. [e-mail]