Most Kenyans see and hear no evil

Sitting in traffic last week, a deep sense of pity ran through my mind.
I guess many of us lucky to have drivers hardly give thought to what is happening outside our car windows. I was running late for an appointment and we seemed stuck at the same spot for so long. Usually, I wouldn’t notice.

Suddenly, there was a blare of sirens and across the road was a motorcade of close to 10 vehicles driving against oncoming traffic at high speed. “Huyo ni nani?” I asked the driver. “Ni Kidero,” he said without a thought.

Rather than curse, I just sat back and thought. Inevitably, politics swamped my mind; the bad state of things. I asked myself; will we ever get it right?

Those held up in traffic, presumably the working class, the chattering class fellows didn’t move an inch other than the wry smiles after two of the cars on the motorcade nearly crashed onto each other.

I don’t know if the governor was in the motorcade and what crossed his mind when he saw those of us stuck in traffic. Does the working class give scant consideration to this modern-day Big Man show-off by mostly governors? I asked myself. In the past one month or so, the media have been preoccupied with news of corruption.

In itself, disregarding all etiquette and wanting to get ahead of others is a form of corruption unless of course in exceptional circumstances. There was nothing exceptional here.

Yes, there have been howls of outrage against corruption. But not the kind of anger one would expect considering the huge sums and the people involved.

In the past two weeks, two impeachment motions (a time-wasting, rent-seeking trickery by MCAs) against governors failed.

In Machakos, the MCAs were sent on a team-building mission in a neighbouring country; in Nairobi, only one MCA showed up in the chambers during debating time. The rest were on a games’ outing in Kisumu. The news was muted in mainstream media even those who should demand better from the city county. What about all those rates they pay? Isn’t that enough for them to seek accountability?

My conclusion is that many Kenyans, especially the tax-paying working class, have become nihilistic; they believe that nothing has meaning or value and pay scant consideration to what is really important in their lives.

When I asked around I was told that for many of them, so long as they can get to watch the English Premier League and drive around in their ex-UK, ex-Japanese second-hand cars, it is well with them.

They hardly face up to the unpleasant truths either because they expect little or are naturally inclined to expect less. They are the Hollow Men as described by TS Eliot.

They are shape without form, a paralysed force, gesture without motion... Nothing moving, nothing going. And the politicians like it that way, because they can use them, so long as they can cough up the taxes.

Who wants to be asked questions? The average Kenyan politician is a con. But then one would think that to pull off those moves, one has got to be a little smart and coldly calculating.

Someone ought to ask: How on earth have they played up on our indifference and fears and desperation for this long without being caught?

Not only is the middle class a disaffected and despairing citizenry, they are disengaged and pathetically indifferent. They live in a cloud cuckoo land; believing that one day, someone will come and fix all their problems.

You will hear them complaining hard that the politicians are taking them down a blind alley, but their contribution to change in governance has been limp-wristed.

Even the politicians beat them at complaining. Recall the famous “concert of collective uproar” in Argentina in 2001 that they threw out three presidents in two weeks?
Something like that couldn’t have taken place without the middle/working class.

The middle class is rendered impotent by the ubiquitous Not in My Backyard (Nimby) principle. Why care? Call a rally at Uhuru Park about corruption today and most likely, those who will probably turn up to protest are the same legions of idlers who cause more harm than good in the end by giving the politicians the numbers.

It is galling to see how disinclined the working class is to ask the hard questions. So how do we unscrew this mess? I have heard calls for a new alternative. An alternative that will be a convenient receptacle for the votes of the disaffected, the apolitical and the unattached working class.

The ones put off by the perpetual lies, the vileness, the hypocrisy and the theft? Certainly, there are men and women of character in our political arena. But not big enough to drain away the swamp.

I am tempted to think that way. Yet the reality is that searching for clean politicians possessed of wisdom and foresight and great ideas and vision is like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Sri Aurobindo, a renowned Indian philosopher, said the modern politician in any part of the world does not represent the soul of a people or its aspirations. “What they represent is all the average pettiness, selfishness, egoism, self- deception.” I cannot but agree with him.