Ruto toying with chaos by arresting opposition leaders

President William Ruto addresses residents on the second day of his tour of Narok County, May 7, 2025. [Kipsang Joseph, Standard]

Kenya has about 105,000 police officers against an adult population of 34 million. That translates to about one police officer per 324 people.

Kenya also has a history of very patchy state capacity. Our coercive capacity is very limited - we surveil a lot less than most strong states do, for instance.

The government often has to resort to insane levels of violence just to prove that it can (which is itself evidence of the state's weakness). Our infrastructural capacity is even more limited - the government barely has any ideological hold on the public.

Over the last year, especially, the Kenyan state and its leaders have haemorrhaged legitimacy faster than at any point in recent memory. The centre is barely holding it together.

Where am I getting at with these facts? Well, events in Trans Nzoia earlier in the week should be a wake-up call to the state that the general public will not take the closing of political space quietly. The attack on police vehicles following an attempt to arrest Governor George Natembeya might just be the beginning of more to come.

And the government does not have enough police officers to be effectively repressive everywhere at all times. The Kenyan state has never had the ideological or coercive capacity to be totalitarian.

If the current administration tries to go down that road, it will most certainly be met with an even bigger rebellion. June 25, 2024 will seem like a Christmas party, to use the phrase of the moment. People will take the law into their own hands. There will most certainly be dissents within the police force. The centre will lose further control.

It is impossible to unscramble the repeal of section 2A, the events of late 2022, and the crowning achievement that was August 2010. Kenyans are now free by law and by habits of mind.

The government better internalise this fact and move on to play within the rules of the game. Otherwise, it will learn the hard way that, despite all their divisions along regional and ethnic lines, Kenyans still have a sense of justice. When pushed to the wall, they shall enforce the law.

Having already lost control of the narrative about its performance over the last two years, the current administration would be best placed to focus on shoring up its legitimacy.

That it will only do by focusing on visible and attributable service delivery. Permanent campaigns springled by the politicisation of the law enforcement system will not work. That approach will only make things worse.

The writer is a professor at Georgetown University