Beware of fake promises of heaven

You must have heard of Mzee Tupatupa, the fictional character in the gospel hit by Tanzania’s songstress Bahati Bukuku who literally ate life with a big spoon.

One day while drunk and staggering, he saw two approaching headlights and assuming they were boda boda cyclists racing, he stood in the middle of the road. Bad idea, for it happened to be a lorry ferrying sand. It hit him and he died.

In the life hereafter, he got the chance to sample both heaven and hell. He first tried the latter because in hell there were beautiful women, plenty of alcohol and other ‘niceties’ of life, and even more, the devil wasn’t the ugly creature we see in religious literature, with horns.

But when he got back to hell after sampling heaven, to his consternation, he saw the devil and his abode in their true colours. Asking what had happened, the devil told Mzee Tupatupa that when he first arrived, it was campaign season!

Friends we are right in that season here in Kenya where we are being promised heaven on earth and even bridges where there are no rivers. The tribal kings are burning the midnight oil (and your taxes of course) to ‘solidify’ their tribal base so as to hawk themselves to the highest bidder in the name of tribal constellations and coalescing.

Then come next year, some time before the August elections, we shall be proclaiming our side victorious before the main race, on the basis of what we have now come to call ‘tyranny of numbers’.

Down the road we shall realise that the devil played the same trick he played on Tupatupa and we swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

Several recent developments should concern us, whether our VIP tribesmen are in this Government or not, and it does not matter our stations in life.

On this Eurobond thing, we have chosen to decide the ‘truth’ on the basis of what we make of President Uhuru Kenyatta and the main claimant, Raila Odinga.

Once we do this, the gist of the matter is lost, facts are sacrificed on the altar of tribe.

On the budgetary front, you may have heard that according to Central Bank our State borrowing in 2003 was Sh362 billion. Today, it is zooming past the Sh2.3 trillion mark. They will tell you it is about development, especially infrastructure including the idol we all should soon begin to worship called SGR.

In February 2015, the global consulting firm, Control Risks, raised the red flag on our romantic but short-term tragedy, because of our huge deficits and the the negative impact of US Federal Reserve Bank’s withdrawal of monetary stimulus for our fledgling economy.

Now as we pile on the debt, three things will worsen our situation. First; our unbridled expenditure, we are living beyond our means. We borrow to pay what we borrowed then repeat the cycle.

Yet despite all the promises, there is no sign we have cut down on public expenditure, both in terms of what Mr Kenyatta told us was an unsustainable wage-bill, and the fuel guzzlers the big men and women use. In fact, these days I have noticed that every top guy in Government has escort cars.

Secondly, our revenue collection has gone down and all of a sudden, KRA is knocking on every door looking for contraband. That is why Treasury CS Henry Rotich has slashed this coming budget from 2015’s Sh2 trillion to Sh1.8 trillion. That is what broke families do; avoid margarine, jam, fruits and dhania and concentrate on ugali and sukumawiki.

Thirdly; corruption, the dirty and overflowing stream where you find both CORD and Jubilee leaders swimming happily, trying to grasp every thing that floats by. Our leaders have squawked and barked for too long, but the eating spree continues!

This means either eating is a collective decision from high up, or everyone is stockpiling to buy votes next year.

Whatever it is, the rest of us don’t care too much about the munching and gulping at the graft table, but whether we are represented there. This is because we have chosen to be biblical Lazaruses, waiting for the bread crumbs to fall!

When so many things are going wrong in a country - a Government seemingly unable to fix insecurity and which resorts to arrests and intimidation over what we text or share on Whatsapp, one which ignores the alleged bribery of judges and is happy to co-exist wit the dead dodo called IEBC - then we deserve the fate they will deliver to us.

In short, with a weak and divided Opposition and a government ruling by edict, and with the media and civil society facing State strangulation, we better start listening to the Mzee Tupatupa song because the future doesn’t seem to be the Seventh Heaven we are being promised.

However, this last statement wouldn’t make sense if you are at the table eating, or nearby waiting for a share.