If we could erect billboards along all major roads in the country, bearing a public interest message, that message should announce to the sons of Rift Valley, who currently wield state power, that Daniel arap Moi’s reign ended 23 years ago and can never be resurrected. We could even add that in those 23 years, constitutional reforms have been enacted, making a state of fear unpalatable and unacceptable in 2025.
Those of us who grew up under the dictatorial rule of Moi and Kanu vividly remember our parents sneaking around with publications such as Finance, Society, Viva and sometimes even the more mainstream Weekly Review, each time they ran headlines or stories critical of the regime. Then, as now, there were power-wielders in government who imagined they could simply beat the populace into submission. Yet, the more people were arrested and tortured, the louder became the clamour for freedom and democracy.
People do not realise why I consistently bemoan the disturbing prevalence of foolishness in the country, especially in high places. Take the case of the young man, Albert Ojwang’. A week before the police foolishly picked him up from Homa Bay count, and drove him to Nairobi, where he would turn up dead within hours in a police cell, the same Homa Bay had feted President Ruto during the Madaraka Day celebrations, and fallen just short of promising him an enduring political coalition with the lakeside people.
Even the opposition wouldn’t write a script as intriguing as this. It is as if the police, or elements of it, are so alienated from the concept of a sense of presence, that they couldn’t just remember Homa Bay county had just given the nation an extravaganza of politics, dance and drama, and the feel-good factor was still reigning supreme. Even without Ojwang’ turning up dead, arresting someone in Homa Bay within that week, unless in extreme circumstances, was so politically naïve and regressive that it would have needed a high-grade fool to order it.
It gets more nauseating when you consider the reasons advanced for the arrest of Ojwang’. He supposedly hurt the feelings of someone in high office, with his blog articles. This reminds me of a publication I read recently. It carried a quote I found fascinating. It went something like this: “While we can’t change society or its warped views, we can vow to stop the epidemic of weak men in our own home and in our community.” And I will tell you why this is partly the problem with the Republic of Kenya.
You see leadership is an elite endeavour. It requires one to rise above ordinary men and women to represent all our dreams and aspirations on a much higher pedestal. In the old-fashioned way, princesses, princes and others anointed for future leadership, were primed for the role with fine schooling, firm mentorship and deep education on the ideals and tenets of their community or kingdom. Some societies even required military training to go with it, as a way of instilling the requisite discipline, command understanding and strength to lead.
Of course, modern democracy has wiped away such admirable systems and forms of governance that built elite leadership from a tender age, which means that today, even clowns and ne’er do wells easily romp to high office. But it does not negate the principle of leadership as an endeavour needing an elite mentality, strength and the ability to withstand criticism and adversity. These virtues are necessary to lead men and women through the predictable national storms that must to be encountered along the way.
This where the crisis of the weak man becomes a national spectacle. To hold any senior state office, while still paranoid or afraid of the words of post-teens in their 20s who use social media, is the textbook definition of weak. This is a conversation in which we must be clear as a nation. We are way past 1952. There is a new generation in town, bearing new technologies. Their forms of expression are freer, faster and bolder. Their freedoms are protected by the constitution. And there is no Governor Evelyn Baring (1952-59) to declare a State of Emergency over such expression of freedoms.
There is another angle. At the height of the Gen Z protests last year, a friend of mine was abducted in the dead of the night. I consider myself someone with a wide enough reach and networks within the security establishment, so I undertook to trace my friend through police stations, DCI headquarters and offices within the three counties of Nairobi, Kajiado and Machakos. From their words and actions, I could tell that regular and senior police simply had no idea who was running the abduction rings.
Police brutality is a cancer that keeps metastasising in this country. But it is made worse by alleged rogue elements in the force, who possibly work outside the formal chain of command, or answer to shadowy characters within the political establishment. I am certain President William Ruto does not appreciate the embarrassment caused to him by his officers just waiting for him to leave Homa Bay amidst great adulation by residents, and then wiping out all those gains with one idiotic act just days later.
But even Ruto must now acknowledge that the aesthetics, the optics, look horrible. In fact, the President needs to find a mirror, look at it and ask himself just how much he is in charge of his government – or not. Because Ojwang’s death presents him with an opportunity to slay the impunity rising in his government. The mere fact of Ojwang being driven from Homa Bay, the alleged scene of the crime, to Nairobi, nearly 400km away, already showed the intention wasn’t a quest for justice, but personal revenge. Any security officer who uses their position to advance personal revenge missions against perceived enemies of others has already lost respect for the uniform and should lose their and rank.
Back to my opening statement, I believe the time has come for the folks who wield power in government, and their subordinates who run the security apparatus, to understand the times have changed since the ’90s. The overbearing Special Branch, which sought to the listen to all conversations and to torture citizens into silence, is long gone. The desire to arrest, beat up and jail everyone with a divergent opinion, or every young creative whose art seems to run counter to the regime’s standpoints, is unsustainable.
Ojwang’ would be alive today if powerful people lived and let live. But this is not just about living and letting live. It is the failure of the system to acknowledge evolution. As the first anniversary of the devastating Gen Z riots comes, if the regime forgets everything, it must never forget that the failure by officialdom to listen to citizenry, and the propensity to force issues down the throats of the people, played major roles in fuelling those riots. The bigger lesson attendant to this, obviously, is that beating people into submission, or abducting them in the night, only serves to embolden the voices of dissent. The impunity dragon has run its course and must be slain once and for all!
