Why Ruto turned to dynasties to run hustler government

Former President Uhuru Kenyatta (C) President William Ruto (L) and Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga during the launch of Building Bridges Initiative report at Bomas of Kenya in Nairobi on November 27, 2019. [File, Standard]

We have come full circle. In 2022, President William Ruto ran a scorched earth electoral campaign against “dynasties” – portrayed to us as candidate Raila Odinga and incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta. 

He has returned to these dynasties in 2024 to salvage his “hustler” presidency and “bottom-up” administration in the name of “broad-based government”. 

Ruto’s meeting with Uhuru last week, and implications therein, made the headlines, but when you cut to the chase, what we really have is the zero-sum outcome of two years of Kenya Kwanza. 

To be fair, this “consensus” moment is not unique to the current regime if we recall our history from KADU’s dissolution in the 1960s, to de facto “one party state”  in the 1970s to 80s, to “cooperation” in the 90s, to “governments/coalitions of national unity” a decade later to “handshakes” today. Prima facie, we might be surprised at this particular regime’s capitulation. 

Especially since, uniquely, this is a first-term “handshake” (similar moments in the multi-party era have been second/final term – 1997, 2008 and 2018 – all of which involved Raila as an actor). 

We should not be. This is straight out of our political elite’s time-worn playbook to anaesthetise “revolution” into “evolution”. 

In the face of the mid-year Gen Z (then Gen Zote) protests that caught them flat-footed, this is a self-preservation moment, not a nation building one.  Any call for national unity is an elite political consensus. 

No lessons were learnt on how Gen Z protests called for us to better train our developmental focus on an intergenerational lens (children, youth, middle-aged, elders or pre-Boomers, Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha). And we are no closer on social vision, what our future society might look like, beyond shillings and cents. 

The President’s recent speeches, especially his State of the Nation and Jamhuri (Independence) Day, have spoken to why broad-based government must drive forward our collective progress.

But there is a sense that these speeches are targeted at an external audience, and true feelings seem to come through in locally targeted addresses which have an increasingly “gaslighting” tone. 

We are now in an unfortunate “zero-sum communication” space where Kenyans accuse the administration of lying about both promises and deeds, and the administration claps back at (ignorant) Kenyans for faking truth and facts. Basically, public dialogue is now “mchongoano”! 

As usual, these broad-based arrangements are exciting speculation about 2027. The question seems to be who will be on which side – but especially, who shall oppose the broad-based one.  

In political dark rooms, numbers and scenarios are being churned out on tribal abacuses, ethnic calculators and vernacular spreadsheets. But, its worth considering the Gen Z, now Gen Zero effect – the third force effect as new opposition. 

Remember, for not an inconsiderable few, Kenya’s recent elections have felt “choiceless” between the usual suspects (or as one newspaper put it in 2022, “Is this it, then?”) and a vote against someone rather than a vote for something. 

Is this elite-level broad-based government the trigger for a third force as its viable alternative? Not for those leaders yet to internalise the place of June 25, 2024 in the public psyche. 

Back to the beginning. This administration and its leadership have come full circle. Let’s briefly speculate on what else this might mean. To repeat, broad-based government is a rearguard action, which suggests a reluctant acceptance, or expectation in relation to 2027, that 2025 is the last year of business and 2026 is campaign time. 

Remember, this is a first-term “handshake”, not a “transition/succession” handshake, which means the stakes are upped to 2007 levels. 

More interesting is what happens to Kenya Kwanza’s Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA) which demands a fundamental pro-poor restructuring of the economy away from crony capital.

The polite term for crony capital is “dynasties”, so if they are now on board, which economy is being restructured away from them? 

Is this the early end for “bottom-up”? Politically, what happens to those policy experiments – affordable housing, universal health care, university funding model – that are struggling for popular traction, Kenya Kwanza truth notwithstanding? Ditto their “created on the fly” jobs model – kazi majuu, kazi mitandaoni, kazi mashinani/mtaani? 

There are harder questions as well. A surge in public spending (as well as waste, corruption and maladministration) has followed every consensus arrangement in government we have had (post 2008 and 2018 being the exemplars). 

Indeed, there is established work that has shown that, in places of political instability, public spending is the stabiliser that supports inclusive government. Knowing this, is our current fiscal consolidation path – even after the IMF agreed to back-end our fiscal targets (nearer to next election) – realistic without more unpopular taxes? 

It is worth noting at this point, the most recent publications on Kenya by the IMF (7th and 8th Reviews) and World Bank (December 2024 Kenya Economic Update) both seem to have picked up an important Gen-Z point: it’s time to take a serious look at spending. 

At one level, its composition to ensure key social spending is protected. At the second, transparency and accountability in public spending (think corruption, waste and theft). Good luck with that! 

The same questions apply to the deeper reform agenda that Kenya sorely needs. Is public service reform, including staff rationalisation, still on the cards? What about privatisation and broader public enterprise reform agenda?  Remember, broad-based government creates public jobs, it can’t afford to take them away.

Might we see an easing, or acceleration, of the digitisation agenda? Will we decelerate, or accelerate public finance management reform? Will we continue with our broken justice system or pursue comprehensive rule of law reform across the chain of justice? 

What about our growth prospects? Both Bretton Woods institutions observe a growth deceleration/reduction this year to 4.7 per cent away from our 2023 spark and back to historical ten-year trend (GDP growth at 4.6 per cent). 

In the initial plan, Kenya Kwanza’s 2024 GDP growth target was 6.3 per cent, climbing to 7.2 per cent in 2027.   It’s now 5 per cent this year and 5.4 per cent in 2027. IMF and World Bank can’t see past 5 per cent before 2029.  What does broad-based government (as risk or its mitigation) do for these numbers, if not factored in? 

It isn’t just politics 2027, or fiscus or economy or reform we should be pondering. We have a political-economic cycle we cannot seem to break, even with our celebrated Constitution. Here’s the real “handshake” question for today – what will a truly different Kenya take us all to do?