Don’t worship Raila or Ruto for that could trigger misrule

ODM leader Raila Odinga with Deputy President William Ruto during the Jamuhuri Day Celebrations at Uhuru Gardens Nairobi on December 12, 2021.  [Emmanuel Wanson]

Between ODM leader Raila Odinga and Deputy President William Ruto, one is most certainly set to be Kenya’s president by Christmas. Don’t rule out the rest of the aspirants, however.

Circumstances conspire in uncanny ways in affairs of humankind. Rank outsiders often emerge from the shadows to steal the show. Hot favourites dither.

Hence, don’t rule out Kalonzo Musyoka, the latter-day buffalo soldier; Musalia Mudavadi, the earthquake; and the down-to-earth Gideon Moi. 

Destiny, however, favours the prepared. Reflecting about her fortunes in the autobiographical The Path to Power, Margaret Thatcher famously recalled the words of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.” 

Dr Ruto and Mr Odinga have toiled in Kenya’s political night. They now scale great heights.

Barring acts of the angels of mischief, one of the two will be on the Hill. Which one? Only God knows. It is in his great book of future secrets. 

Indeed, it could turn out that neither of them gets there. Providence plays games with humankind. The blind Gloucester in Shakespeare’s King Lear laments, “As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.”

The lead masked Egwugwu in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart boasts, “I am Evil Forest. I kill a man on the day that his life is sweetest to him... I am Dry-meat-that-fills-the-mouth, I am Fire-that-burns-without-faggots.”

Such are the angels of mischief and doom in the affairs of men. But when they keep their pranks at bay, men and women scale great heights. Some ascend to sit on sundry thrones, to lead monarchies. In olden days, such people reigned with abandon.

They believed that they were preordained to inherit kingdoms and crowns. Their subjects had turned over to them a part of their souls. With that came the divine right to rule, and to be ruled.

The monarch was, accordingly, not accountable to the people. She was only accountable to God. And only she knew how to account. 

Every so often in the Third World especially, leaders and the led want to slip back to that regal and monarchical state. They want to treat political leaders as if they were just slightly less than gods, as some did in Biblical times.

The Egyptian pharaoh scoffs at Moses, who says he is God’s messenger to the great man. The big man laughs, for he believes he is God. Elsewhere, the pompous Nebuchadnezzar surveys, from his gold-embellished terraces, the wonder of the world that was Babylon. He sees magnificent temples and hanging gardens.

There are 200 square miles of ornate buildings in gated communities. The Euphrates and Tigris flow through the grand city, reflecting the colour of gold. And Nebuchadnezzar likes the thought that he is in charge. “Is this not Babylon; the great Babylon that I have built? And if I am not God, then who is God?” 

Without a doubt, history produces great men and women, as great leaders of people. Such leaders should be edified. Yet, they should never be deified. They are sons and daughters of men and women. They may occupy special places in society – and in the hearts and minds of some people.

When those who adore them fail to draw the essential demarcation lines between the divine and the human, society sits at the gates of peril. Peril begins as ordinary adoration.

Idealised and heroic images of leaders are embellished through propaganda, lies and twisting of facts. Other elements of social engineering follow.  

Without a doubt, there has emerged in Kenya the Baba Cult. The Hustler Cult is in the making. Odinga’s followers have apotheosized him. He is a religion.

And Ruto’s are following suit. This divinisation of political leaders is dangerous. Its full magnitude is only set to be fully felt after one of them takes over from President Uhuru Kenyatta.

It portends future misrule.  Citizens must refrain from leader worship, or prepare to pay the price. 

Dr Barrack Muluka is a strategic communications advisor. www.barrackmuluka.co.ke