Kenya’s misguided protestors

How Kenya’s Gen Z have exaggerated expectations of their government and president

THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | I am writing this article from Nairobi where young, educated Kenyans are keeping President William Ruto busy. At the beginning of these protests, naïve commentators commended Ruto for conceding to the demands of the protestors by withdrawing the Finance Bill and then firing his entire cabinet. I warned that this was suicidal because it was likely to give a signal of weakness. Consequently, the protestors would not be appeased and would up their demands. This is exactly what has happened.

I am writing this article on August 08 from Nairobi Serena. When I landed at the airport early in the afternoon there were no vehicles to take people to town. Why? The Gen Z had promised widespread protests to march onto State House and remove Ruto from power. The government deployed its police and military might on every arm and leg of Nairobi. The city was empty, and travelers were advised to find hotels near the airport to stay till night when protests calm down and then drive into the city. However, the Gen Zs didn’t show up. I thought the kids had feared until I talked to a guru in these matters who told me the full story.

Apparently, the Gen Zs (reference to young people here) are running rings around Ruto. They threaten to protest at Place Y. The government deploys all its forces there only for the protests to take place at Place X. Recently they threatened to march onto the airport and government shut down all roads leading to it, disrupting all air travel. But the Gen Zs didn’t show up at the airport. Instead, the protests took place at an entirely different location. This, in military strategy, can be called “bleeding the enemy white” via deceit. The legendary Chinese military strategist, Sun Zhu, who lived around 500 BCE, would have recognised it.

The people protesting in Kenya are not tomato vendors and taxi touts. By all accounts, they are educated middle class kids carrying the latest iPhones and using social media, especially twitter (X) to mobilize. Clearly, this is not a class of people without money to buy bread or sanitary pads at an extra cost. They are therefore the least likely to be affected by the tax increases that had been proposed in the now defunct Finance Bill. Hence, the Finance Bill was only a mobilising issue. The real issue is governance.

Kenya, like all poor countries the world over, is saddled with endemic corruption. The Kenyan political class, especially parliamentarians, pay themselves hefty salaries far above even those of parliamentarians in rich countries. But that is a minor source of their income. The biggest source of their wealth is money earned by leveraging political power (influence peddling) from the private sector or direct looting of the state. Consequently, Kenya could be the only country in Africa with a political aristocracy. The most dominant players in Kenya’s politics today are sons and daughters of the founding fathers. And they are also big in business.

This, ironically, is the source of Kenya’s stability. Despite their myriad differences, Kenya’s political class is united around making money. Accumulation of wealth (whether in the private sector as patronage and favouritism or by looting the public purse) is what allows the state here to placate the conflicting interests of its divided and unruly political elites. I wonder what would happen if corruption was stumped out of Kenya. What would hold together this flabby and heterogenous coalition of ethnically diverse elites? It is possible Kenya would descend into civil war.

This brings me to the young people protesting in Nairobi and other towns. Kenya is going through social transformation. The Gen Zs have been raised on the intellectual diet of the modern bureaucratic state we inherited from colonial rule. They demand a state whose legitimacy is based on its ability to provide a large basket of public goods and services to all citizens. They demand that this be done through arms-length procedures via institutions impersonally without regard to whom one knows. This is the classic Weberian (after German sociologist Max Weber) state.

If this is what the Gen Zs want, then I am afraid they are disarticulated from the reality of their country. Kenya is still a predominantly poor and rural economy where most people derive their livelihood from agriculture. Its per capita income ($2,000 or $7,000 in Purchasing Power Parity), per capita revenue ($460 or $1,607 in PPP) and per capita public spending ($535 or $1,870 in PPP) is not enough to build the legitimacy of the state on delivering a large basket of public goods and services to all citizens. The affordable tools of governance are patronage and repression.

There is a fundamental disconnect between the capacity of the state and the expectations of the public in poor countries. Our views about how we should be governed are derived from the experience of rich countries. These countries have high levels of per capita income, per capita revenue and therefore high per capita public spending. For instance, this year, the USA, with a per capita income of $85,500 has public spending per capita of $30,000. This can buy a large basket of public goods and services for all its citizens.

Therefore, young Kenyans can remove Ruto from power, but he can only be replaced by a government that will do exactly what he is doing. Besides, Kenya has had four changes of government in the last 22 years without much change in its governance. For instance, when Daniel arap Moi was president, his government was accused of gross corruption. His party lost power to the opposition led by Mwai Kibaki but corruption got worse. When Uhuru Kenyatta replaced Kibaki, Kenyans said their country had entered the worst levels of corruption. Uhuru fell out with Ruto, the latter running as an opposition candidate. He won and now Kenyans are saying corruption under him is worse than under Uhuru.

Why has corruption in Kenya grown despite changes of government all of which have promised to get rid of it. The story of Kenya is the story of every poor country, the rare exception being post genocide Rwanda under President Paul Kagame. The answer is simple but fundamental: corruption is the way the system works, not the way it fails. This is because the state in Kenya is over developed in functions, but grossly underdeveloped in capacity, both human and financial. So, its reach goes far beyond its grasp. The result is institutionalised corruption and incompetence.

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amwenda@ugindependent.co.ug