Ruto must look beyond serving optics and go for complete overhaul

 

The nominations of Rebecca Miano and Eric Muriithi Muuga to the positions of Attorney General and Cabinet Secretary for Water, Sanitation and Irrigation respectively should ideally be great news to the ears of Kenyans. Ms Miano will, if the Parliament approves her nomination, be the first female Attorney General in the country’s over 60-year history. Mr Muuga on the other hand will stand out as one of the youngest Cabinet Secretaries in the history of the nation. News that focus on his age at 32 prove that there is a great hope that he will be the first of many to turn the tide and have more youth in positions of power across various sectors of government.

The representation of minoritised voices is important in pushing a country forward, and especially a developing democracy. Although women are the majority gender in Kenya, and the youth greatly outnumber the elderly, positions of power continue to majorly be held by older men. These people, although not the minority, have been made so and effectively silenced. Having this representation therefore ensures that the subaltern, in the words of Spivak, can finally speak. This is the reasoning behind the setting aside of nominative seats and the two-thirds gender rule, both found in the Constitution. Through these rules, the disabled, the youth, and all other minoritised groups can be given a seat at the table and air a variety of views drawn from the unique perspectives that their lived experience affords them.

The guiding ethos behind agitating for the representation of minority voices is the concept of identity politics. First espoused by the Combahee River Collective in 1977, identity politics makes room for the different identities that make us, and considers how power is distributed, as well as who gets locked out of power. By naming identity politics, the Collective, which was made up of Black women, was able to call attention to how the intersection of their Blackness and their womanhood affected their ability to ascend up the American political ladder, and advocate for an opening up of the field so that their voices could be heard.

If identity politics seems to be functioning as required in Kenya, then, why wouldn’t the nominations of Ms Miano and Mr Muuga not be celebrated? For us to understand the people’s reticence in lauding these nominations, we must look at the context in which they are taking place. The youth, in agitating for change in the country over the past couple of months, had demanded that the entire Cabinet be scrapped and the President present a new list of names. President Ruto’s decision to send home all the Cabinet Secretaries was therefore received with much joy. His decision, a few weeks later to announce a new Cabinet that comprises six members of the old one, including Ms Miano, however, shows a lack of goodwill, and a desire to maintain the status quo at the expense of actual growth and development. The throwing in of these two nominations that signal change, therefore, is a cooptation and bastardisation of identity politics.

Such cooptation of radical movements by the elites is not new, and is often a ploy to consolidate power whilst seeming to be progressive. The expected effect is that women, and especially the youth, will be placated and cease their clamour for change. But how can this be so when, within the same government, the Cabinet Secretary for Interior remains the same? At this point in the protests, over 50 people have been killed at the hands of police, and abductions continue to take place nearly every day, with dozens remaining missing and the police admitting that they have been behind some notable abductions. Is it a show of good faith that key actors who have been working in service of repression of dissent are back at the helm?

For the President to show that he has truly listened, he must look beyond serving optics whilst maintaining the status quo. A leaner Cabinet, without unconstitutional members in it and with a complete overhaul of faces, would prove a willingness to change.