Only change of mindset can free citizens from political bondage

National Dialogue Committee co-chairs Kalonzo Musyoka (left) and Kimani Ichung'wah at the Bomas of Kenya, September 2023. [Dennis Kavisu, Standard]

As the 'National Dialogue' draws to a close, I must restate something I said earlier in the year. This country requires a revolution, but not one led by the comprador bourgeoisie.

When the frustrations of young people are preyed on by the political class to re-litigate processes that are res judicata, then it makes us all collectively poor.

For when they heed the calls to fill the streets, their hopes are raised. They think that a solution that they didn't find on the ballot may actually come through the streets. The political class then finds a rapprochement, and they convene forums of dialogue like the theatre of the absurd that is going on in Bomas.

We, the people must now start framing our issues without overdependence on the political class and their captured institutions. We must re-ignite the Ufungamano Initiative model of unity of purpose or else, like the characters in the play 'Betrayal in the city', we will be held complicit in killing our future just like others have killed our past. It cannot be that in four electoral cycles, our elections management body has not been able to conduct one election with a clear winner.

It cannot be that in four electoral cycles, our presidential elections have ended in a near fifty-fifty. It cannot be that our elections that have been called ethnic censuses have not been able to indicate a different outcome even when the ethnic elites change. Media reports that the committee is yet to find a middle ground on the reconstitution of the IEBC is a pointer that Bomas as presently constituted is the big boys club for the big boys' interests.

Without belabouring the obvious, representation is at the very core of any constitutional democracy. The electoral body, as presently constituted, is unable to transact any business. There are by-elections that are due. However, when our political class meets to discuss 'National Dialogue', they prioritise the entrenchment of positions into Constitution. To expect anything revolutionary from Bomas is to be wildly optimistic. Hopefulness and confidence about the future is a good thing.

It gives us the resolve to keep pushing, knowing that in spite of present difficulties, a brighter day will come. But to expect ground-breaking solutions where the political class exchange less than elegant words is wilful ignorance. This country is not different from a giant punching under its weight. As Prof Anyang Nyong'o would say, "This is an eagle that keeps walking with the chicken''. An eagle walks with the chicken not knowing it could fly high above the cloud.

That brings me to my ultimate point. For far too long, we have accepted the comforting lie that we are the biggest economy in the Great Lake's region. But we fail to notice that our peers are now outsprinting us. This has been compounded by the delusions of grandeur of "Africa Rising''. You almost want to retort, rising where? Our answers, our solutions will always miss the point by the river if we fail to frame the right questions. Like Israelites of the Bible, we have gone in circles in Mount Horeb for far too long because we have hardly framed the right questions.

In instances we have appeared to have done the right framing, we have quickly abandoned the higher ideals and settled for the straightjackets of our time. It was just after enacting the new Constitution that our intellectual elite told us of a monster called 'tyranny of numbers'. This theory presupposed that we had no capacity as the people of Kenya to make decisions at the ballot. That we would merely rubber-stamp that which our ethnic elite had decided for us.

We did very little to disabuse this notion. We chanted 'thuraku thuraku', 'tibim' and now I hear my Kikuyu friends calling people they disagree with 'tugege'. All these will not get us out of the short-sightedness that the political class has boxed us into. No one but ourselves can free our chains by first freeing our minds.

-Mr Mwaga is convenor of Inter-parties Youth Forum. [email protected]