On April 2, Kenya’s President William Ruto in a speech extended an olive branch to the opposition and pleaded them to hold off Monday’s “mother of all demonstrations” in Nairobi. Opposition leader Raila Odinga immediately in a speech communicated that they would not held demonstrations and heeded the government call for negotiations and talks.
For the last three weeks, every Mondays and Thursdays, large demonstrations, sporadic protests, chaos, mayhem, lootings, police tear gas and water cannons have become part and parcel of the denizens of Nairobi. This comes after former Prime Minister, and Kenya’s perennial opposition leader Raila Odinga called for demonstrations on the rising cost of living and electoral malpractices during last year’s elections.
As a nation that has a history of bloody post-election violence, Kenya risks descending into unprecedented political turmoil as the opposition is adamant in holding demonstrations every Mondays and Thursdays – and if talks fail to bear fruits. Already violent counter-demonstrations, the burning-down of a mosque and a church in Kibera, the looting and vandalism of property belonging to former President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, police violence against journalists and a political atmosphere imbued with dangerous rhetoric and chest-thumbing political discourses from the government and opposition blocks raise serious concerns for the country.
But why is Kenya facing a political crisis again seven months after a highly contested election process?
Dynasties versus Hustlers
To understand the current weekly demonstrations that are rocking the nation and bringing life and business to a halt in Nairobi, one has to grasp the political discourse of the election campaigns of August 2022. When then President Uhuru Kenyatta politically side-lined his deputy William Ruto and endorsed and campaigned for the opposition candidate Raila Odinga in the elections, a seismic shift occurred in the Kenyan political landscape. How can the president support an opposition candidate? It was a first in Kenyan history.
However, this played into the hands of William Ruto. As the elections approached, the economy hit rock bottom, inflation sky-rocketed basic commodities and Kenya witnessed its highest youth unemployment. I was conducting ethnographic fieldworks in Nairobi as a PhD student and the anger and frustrations with the government of Uhuru Kenyatta was palpable in all my interactions. When Uhuru kenyatta left office, he was unpopular and his own political constituency voted en masse for his rival William Ruto.
More significantly, the elections of 2022 will be remembered for its dynasties and hustlers narratives. The then embattled Deputy President and Presidential candidate William Ruto successfully framed the elections as a contest of the haves and the have-nots. For him, it was a class war of the poor masses and the detached super rich. Candidate Ruto convincingly embellished himself as the candidate of the poor, a man who walked to school bare-foot and sold chicken on the road side. His life story resonated with the majority of Kenyans. He claimed to be a simple hustler who is being politically sabotaged by the political dynasties of Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga – two scions of the founding fathers of the Kenya. In the end, William Ruto won the elections with a slim margin – he had beaten the odds.
The meaning of William Ruto’s victory
How should we read, understand and comprehend President William Ruto’s election victory? Kenyan politics since independence has been an arena where the political elites and their descendants jockeyed for power and influence. And indeed few were able to “invade” this upper-class, exclusive and secluded political strata of Kenya’s social structure. One would remember the humiliations and indignities unleashed upon the late George Saitoti – a man who herded cattle as a small boy in Maasailand and rose to become Kenya’s Vice President – in the run up to President Daniel Arap Moi succession politics.
Saitoti was politically marginalized and rendered powerless during the succession politics of the ruling KANU in the run up to the elections of 2002. He was replaced by Musalia Mudavadi, himself the son of former powerful Home Secretary Moses Mudavadi who was Moi’s right-hand man in the 80s. Crucially, George Saitoti was passed over in succeeding Moi and inheriting the independence party KANU. President Moi picked the then young Uhuru Kenyatta as his successor. The political predicaments that befall Deputy President William Ruto in the run up to the 2022 elections had a precedent in Kenya’s political history.
President Ruto, himself a student of Nyayo politics and a wealthy politician, understood and grasped Kenya’s elite politics. Uhuru Kenyatta’s endorsement of Raila Odinga was no surprise to the man from Sugoi; for he himself took part in bringing-down George Saitoti during Moi succession politics as a KANU loyalist.
William Ruto’s ambition to succeed Uhuru Kenyatta has already been mythologized; how he planted politicians loyal to himself in the run-up to the elections of 2017 in the Jubilee Party primaries and all over populous constituencies across the country has become a legend in Kenyan political strategy. This had irked Uhuru Kenyatta and soon William Ruto was gradually politically side-lined after the 2017 elections.
Ruto had amassed a political muscle of money and loyalist men and women for the 2022 elections. Moreover, his populist hustler versus dynasties narrative was advantageous to his campaign. His campaign slogan was “freedom is coming”. This was a “freedom” from the Kenyattas and the Odingas and the exclusive and detached political elites; candidate Ruto and his surrogates preached this line of argument all over the country in small churches, market places and in packed stadiums. And with a dire economic situation William Ruto had captivated the imaginations and captured the attentions of Kenyans from all walks of life.
Of shareholders, IMF and GMOs
Nevertheless, William Ruto’s government commenced its tenure with a wrong footing. The government is implementing IMF-induced austerity measures in the economy. Vital fuel subsidies were scarped and this translated to even more price increases on basic commodities. While the government argues that in the long-term prices will reduce, in an inter-connected global economy rife with risks and unforeseen crises, there are no guarantees. We indeed live in what the German Sociologist Ulrich Beck termed Risk societies. A war (Ukraine), a pandemic (Covid-19), a pollution and any unprecedented risks can alter and disrupt the global economy and planned government policies. And the brunt of these risks will be faced by the poor masses. Moreover, the government approved the distribution of GMO seeds to farmers as crops fail continue alongside draughts and short rainfalls. The productivity of GMOs is in question, and with increasing food prices, Kenyans face hard times and risks in the coming years as the government’s Treasury Cabinet Secretary Njuguna Ndung’u warns.
Moreover, the recent government appointments of loyalists and political cronies have raised eyebrows. President William Ruto is rewarding his political foot-soldiers and positioning himself already for the elections of 2027. The appointment of 50 Cabinet Administrative Secretaries will dent a big hole into tax payers money. Furthermore, the Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua’s terming of the UDA government as a firm owned by shareholders was not promising of any progress. By waging a “war” against the dynasties and allocating government positions to the so-called shareholders (or political cronies) are we witnessing the dynastyfication of the Rutos and the Gachaguas?
Rising cost of living
President William Ruto came to power when the economy was in tatters. In his election campaigns he promised that he will reduce the cost of living immediately after taking power. Ironically, the government cut vital subsidies on fuel and other basic commodities worsening the country’s inflation. Fuel price which powers Kenya’s vibrant service industry and the private sector increased exponentially. Today, the majority of Kenyans face increasing prices of fuel and electricity and other basic commodities like maize flour, milk, water and vegetables.
The current demonstrations are centered around a strangulating cost of living in the country. Moreover, droughts have wrecked havoc in the Northern parts of Kenya rendering millions face starvation. President William Ruto came to power with a lot of hopes for Kenyans. He promised change and an abrupt economic transformation which I think he over-communicated and over-promised to the electorate. Seven months into his government the people have grown impatient and the opposition is capitalizing on this.
Babapolitics is Back
More importantly, since coming to power, the ruling United Democratic Alliance (UDA) party has been on the course of establishing absolute political hegemony in the political arena. To the chagrin of the opposition party whose many of its members have defected to the ruling party rendering parliament an organ of the executive. Moreover, the government has started a process of re-structuring the independent election commission despite the opposition shunning the process.
Kenya’s opposition has been politically cornered and “battered” by the government. Gasping for political oxygen the opposition has no other option but to call for mass demonstrations. Raila Odinga, the man Kenyans call Baba, is a veteran orchestrator of mass actions in Kenyan politics; and when he speaks, despite being in the opposition, the political ground tremors.
Five decades in opposition politics and losing five presidential elections, Raila Odinga knows when the ground is fertile for demonstrations and mass actions against governments. Nevertheless, the recent rapprochement between the government and the opposition and the reconciliatory tone of the leaders has eased anxieties in the country. Kenya has evaded Monday’s “mother of all demonstrations” but only by a whisker.
Maandamano politics: vice or vital?
Opposition leader Raila Odinga is haunted by the political ghosts of 2018 handshake with Uhuru Kenyatta. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida conceptualize a ghost, ghosts and ghostly as what is hidden, what is implicit, what is ignored, what is not seen, what is overlooked. In March 2018, Raila Odinga betrayed the masses who demonstrated from him almost 6 months and the Supreme Court ruling that nullified the 2017 elections on the grounds of electoral malpractice. Like nothing happened and ignoring all the struggles, he had a political truce and pact with President Uhuru Kenyatta of which its terms remained ghostly; most probably Uhuru assured him of his support in the 2022 elections while Odinga suspended holding the government accountable. The handshake ignored the killings of two small girls Samantha Penda “Baby Pendo” and Stephanie Moraa in one of those demonstrations as police fired bullets in spree and the many others killed, maimed and brutalized.
The Maandamano politics of demonstrations and protests, birthed, nurtured, shaped and sustained Kenyan democracy over the years. Kenyans would not have enjoyed the current constitutional political rights without the 1990s demonstrations and protests of which Raila Odinga was one of its architects. However, Maandamano politics can also be misused by the political elites. Elite political pacts can render the fruits of Maandamano politics useless as in the case of 2018 handshake.
The people have the rights, as enshrined in the constitution, to demonstrate and protest against the power that be, at all times; the masses and civil societies should snatch the raison d’ etre of Maandamano politics from the political class and power-hungry leaders, lest they render it a political tool for talks and political pacts in the post-election periods.
