PRESIDENT Daniel Moi, my country’s president for the first 20 years of my life, was a man given unto choice, memorable quotes.
One of my favourite, albeit no longer palatable in the modern, gendered etymology, was his analogy of the ballet dress in reference to the circuitous nature of Kenyan politics.
Like the ballet dress, Kenya’s politics moves thither and hither, this way and that way, giving flashes of hope in every direction, but offering none in the end.
The person attending a ballet and the Kenyan voter have one thing in common.
They both go home amused, but emotionally conned. kama viongozi wanaenda kwa njia wanayoenda, mi nasema pole sana kwenu wananchi kwa siku zijazo (Woe unto you Kenyans, if your leaders continue in the trajectory they have taken), Moi warned in 2002 before he retired.
There is no better time to appreciate Moi’s ballet analogy than what is obtaining in Kenya at the moment—a tired, conniving political class that is renewing itself ahead of the 2027 general election.
The flow of our politics is painfully predictable.
It is a tale of dalliance, betrayal, victimhood and saviorhood, and the cycle begins afresh.
Community A unites with communities B and C to punish D, C and the rest.
Upon victory when D and C are no longer a factor, they find themselves utterly incompatible and fall out. B begins to unite C and D to take on A, accusing them of betrayal.
To insulate themselves against power grab, A conscripts E into the scheme to fight B, C and D, while also working to divide B. Every player in the equation is a victim of one betrayal or another.
When you listen to or watch them, the whole kit and caboodle, you realise there is very little difference between them. The rhetoric is the same, tactics similar and the lack of a bigger vision.
They even dress the same – in multi-coloured shirts and wide, ugly hats. Every emerging, alternative leadership is swallowed up into the old way of doing things.
They are taken to high mountains and shown all kingdoms of the political world and its splendour. And voila! They begin wearing the same multi-coloured shirts, flying in choppers and spewing the same rhetoric of “this country is for all of us.”
Ultimately, Kenyans do not have a good choice of leaders to select from. Generations upon generations are wasted, and sacrificed on the altar of cheap politics as opposed to the things that matter. Unfortunately, there is no shortcut from this conundrum.
There are two clear ways to deliver Kenya from this circus, and free it on the road to prosperity. The first route is through a painful, ‘German-style’, political cataclysmic event that propels us into a proper
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