It’s curious how life has become unbearable for many Kenyan households while those in government make millions in under 22 months. It’s unnerving that some cabinet nominees say they made part of their big fortune from payment of pending bills yet so many Kenyans have lost life and property because they traded with the government and years later, they are yet to be paid. This sorry state of affairs finds its most eloquent expression in the auction yards across the country. Lives and families have been destroyed by a government unwilling to pay for goods and services it consumed.
It’s now evident that the pompous declaration by Kenya Kwanza that its agenda number one would be to uplift the “have-nots” was a phoney political gimmick. A fantastic lie that molested the emotions of Kenyans for nothing. If in doubt, see how a golden opportunity to re- awaken the conscience of the nation is being wasted on conventional political thinking that reinforces the same old darker angels of our nature that have led us to the sociopolitical and economic standoff that we find ourselves in.
Kenya’s post-independence story is a sad narration of how personal material greed is the ultimate enemy of collective ideological purity. Without collective ideological purity, state building would never take root. For it becomes impossible to create national identities that serve as locus of loyalty that trumps kin selection and reciprocal altruism as the modes of sociability. That in the 21st century we still recruit public officers on the basis of personal friendship and family is a state that prof Francis Fukuyama calls ‘a modern but undeveloped society’’.
Part of the reasons why the last cabinet could not deliver, was in large measure because more than half of the members of the cabinet deemed themselves friends of the appointing authority. That could explain the sickening impunity in some of the ministries. I read with horror what the JKIA-Adani deal would portend for the country. While the deal is touted as godsend, we must remember that PPPs and JVs are today being used as neoliberal tools to capture strategic assets of the developing countries. The two projects successfully undertaken under such terms to date, the SGR and the Nairobi Expressway hold very little promise for ordinary poor Kenyans in the city and in the rural areas.
We remember with fondness how Kenya Kwanza tore into the construction of the expressway, terming it ‘an elite-centric thinking’. But when they had a critical moment of leadership, they told us in words and deeds that priority to them was having better cars, renovation of statehouse and state lodges. The entertainment budget in statehouse was more important than education for our kids. It took the courage and blood of many young people for us to realise that Kenya Kwanza has been sleepwalking its way through leadership. In 21 months, this administration has cut short the dreams of at least 115 young people and plunged their families in mourning, sorrow and lost dreams. Official records indicate that 75 people were killed last year and this year we have dispatched some other 40 young people to their maker by the very guns bought by their taxes and police paid by their taxes.
At a time when we had expectations that we would invest in factories that produce and open up the rural areas for productivity, we have instead embraced wheeler-dealing that allows us little trinkets that are nothing but shallow display of exhibitionism. If in doubt, SGR will not be in the hands of our people for a long time to come. The expressway will not be in the hands of our people for at least the next 27 years. We are on the verge of giving away JKIA under the pretext of ‘private sector-led growth’.
Time has come for us to look at selfishness, domination, patronage and cronyism that has led us to this tower of Babel in the eye. As a matter of urgency we must re-mobilise this country around a new centre of superior, common sense ideas.
Mr Mwaga is the convenor Inter Parties Youth Forum. [email protected]
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