Our children's future and hopes in our hands amid drums of war

President William Ruto (right) and Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, during the 95th Kenya Music Festival 2023 State Concert at Nakuru State House. [File, Standard]

Generation Alpha rolls you up in tantalising freshness and a sense of nostalgia, both at once. It has been a joy to spend time with some of these amazing children at this year’s Nairobi International Book Fair.

The 25th edition of this annual event awakens you to the mysterious interplay between time and space. It is a shifting succession of events and passage of time. It speaks to the mediation of time and fate in our lives. We appreciate how things have changed, and yet remained the same. But it also speaks to the futility of chasing after the wind, and woolly materialism.  

These young people, aged up to about 14, roll me back to primary school years, in Ofafa Jericho Primary School in the 1960s and 70s. It feels like just a short while ago. But it has been long enough for me to begin understanding aging.

Not so long ago, I was one of these striplings. I was singing, at Charter Hall, “Oh, dear! What can the matter be!” and “Let Us head to Kelvin Grove, Bonnie Lassie Oh! Through its mazes let us rove!” Now I stare in grandfatherly reflection and passion.  

I appreciate the present more clearly than ever. It is a fleeting place, cast between the past and the future. The present is a split second. Within it, you don’t even know what is about to happen next. It is a blink of an eye. Soon it is gone, to be replaced with another uncertain blinking.

And so life itself becomes a succession of these blinks, until there are no more of them left for each individual, in their own time.  

Someday, you will be replaced in the space you occupy. At home and away, we shall each be replaced. And those who come after us often do a much better job than we did. Certainly the organisers of the book fair, who walk in our footsteps, are doing a more stellar job than we did in our time.

The sparkle and substance of the fair speak to movement, development and growth. Even the children bring fresh flair. Their beaming faces and melodious voices speak of hope. The thematic thrust of their songs herald a post-school future full of hope. It is amazing how Gen-Alphas manipulate wind instruments to produce soothing mellifluence. Here is competence in learning, if ever there was such a thing. If these kids do not get anything else out of school, they surely will leave with some skill that could provide a lifeline?   

Yet, in the midst of all this, you cannot help wondering what kind of country we are preparing to hand over to these young citizens. The ugly public imbroglio between President William Ruto and his bucolic deputy, Rigathi Gachagua, comes to mind.

For weeks now, the country has been treated to riotous public drama by these two and their cantankerous messengers. These gentlemen and their troops think that they own the country. You see them everywhere, noisily fighting for the opportunities therein. Yet, even if they should acquire the entire Taita Taveta and the greater Emanyulia each, the country can never be their property, to fight over.   

The definition of let-down is how these two gentlemen have managed the Presidency. Their public displays of anger, whether direct or by proxy, speak to disastrous emotional intelligence.

Put together with their supporting casts in the unpleasant political drama, these gentlemen are an existential threat to the bright futures our children dream of. Their baying for each other’s political blood does not augur well for the country.  

Oh, dear! What can the matter be? The Gachagua camp accuses Ruto of ingratitude, for which they say he will pay. That they made him President. But he treats them like rubbish. That, accordingly, the Mt Kenya region will teach him a political lesson. But do I sense something more sinister than a simple lesson?

Do I hear the double-double beat of the thundering drums of war? For its part, the intrepid Ruto camp is massing troops “to impeach Gachagua.” As the poet John Dryden (1631–1700 wrote, “The trumpet’s loud clangour excites us to arms, with shrill notes of anger, and mortal alarms.”  Do I hear the whistle of Armageddon?   

Where does this baying Presidency leave our singing children, their hopes, and bright futures? Where does the mortgaging of the country to foreigners leave these kids? A plea to impeachers; could you consider both Gachagua and Ruto, to secure the children’s future?  

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