Kenya Kwanza secret deals expose self-serving regime that won't last

 Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi. [File, Standard]

Unending layers of secret deals by the Kenya Kwanza Government, and its management of dissent cast the nation into frightful Frankenstein situation. 

From the edible oils saga, to mysterious fertilisers experience, and now the Adani affair, the emerging picture is a portrait of an avaricious State, in the lap of a people whose philosophy of government and goals are at odds with the welfare of citizens.

In the portrait is an eating State that has defined self-service as its primary agenda. Underlying this self-service is quest for grotesque self-enrichment, no matter what it takes. There are no scruples, no holds barred, and no capacity for embarrassment, no matter what comes into limelight. The end justifies everything. The unfolding Adani saga at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) has all characteristics of disgrace. The Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Davis Chirchir, has recently been hard placed to speak to origins and character of this deal. A seemingly ill-reputed corporate wheeler-dealer entity has been given a multi-billion shilling contract, “to refurbish JKIA.”

Appearing before Senate a few days ago, the CS hemmed and hawed. Chirchir chewed his tongue, where it was not tied in his mouth. He said things even he should find difficult to believe.  He concurrently knew everything and nothing about Adani and Kenya’s latest multi-billion state saga. This Adani affair is only the latest pointer to a State hostile to those who gave it life.

The William Ruto regime, in its first two years, is mirrored in Mary Shelley’s 1818 horrendous allegory of a creature that hates its maker. For two years, Kenyans have been shunted from the phantasmagoria to the fantastic. From the wild they have been taken to the nightmarish.   

The Kenya Kwanza State that we gave ourselves in 2022 conjures up proto-Kafkaesque images from 19th Century Gothic world. Strangers have scanned our eye irises for gain, in the full glare of State. We have been sold stones and donkey dung, in a State driven exercise. We have eaten millions of defective cooking oils, as State looks on. Our children wallow in a confused and hurriedly introduced education system. Nobody seems to know where its head is, or tail.  

The university system is collapsing, as State plays the flute. The software of the meeting point between advanced training and preliminary artisanal competence based training has not been defined. The university fees funding model is in a spin, courtesy of uneducated experiments by the ministry.

Public health insurance is in similar dire straits, as a factor of suspect State promptings. A sinister affordable housing saga has reached a Bermuda Triangle. It’s cast precariously in a bundle of opacity, gluttony and stasis. The triangle seems set to swallow it.  

Forced disappearances became order of the day for those who protest against State driven Bermuda of fiscal decadence, splurge, and creeping autocracy. We are abducted by balaclava wearing individuals. We are teargassed by inhumane police officers, even when we writhe on the ground, in pain; our limbs broken. We are disappeared. Our judges are intimidated and blackmailed with horror and terror, if they ask authorities to produce us before the courts.   

I am Victor Frankenstein. I created the sadism that torments us with astronomical cost of living, and squanders our taxes. I created the beast that beats us up in the streets, disappears us, dumps our cadavers in garbage quarries, while splurging our resources, when not auctioning us to foreigners. We are collectively in the horrific place in Mary Shelley’s Gothic allegory, Frankenstein.  

Mary’s Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist, creates “a human being” in his laboratory. He soon finds he has given life to a revolting monster. It hates him. It hates human beings. It vows revenge against him for creating it. Frankenstein refers to his sapient creation as “the beast, monster, thing,” et al.

I am one of the scientists who made this thing. Like Frankenstein, I am horrified by what I made. Once again, I abjure all affinity. 

Mercifully, this creature is in free fall. Internal public spats by the captains attest. These internecine quarrels are not to be framed as “William Ruto versus Rigathi Gachagua,” nor as “Gachagua versus Ichung’wa.” They should be seen as what they are. The implosion of the Frankenstein thing. For a while, it will teargas us, abduct us, disappear us, and dump us. But it will not last forever. Even Adani will come to pass. Kenya will go on as a better place. Thanks to the spirit of the people, especially the youth. 

-Dr Muluka is a strategic communications adviser. www.barrackmuluka.co.ke