Kenya is headed in the wrong direction; let's stop the descent

The "Kufa makanga, kufa dereva" calls are not idle political sloganeering. They are the latter-day version of "Mene mene tekel upharsin". The sovereign are telling the political class that they have been weighed and have been found wanting. It speaks to a populace that cannot recognise anymore the executive they elected. They agonise daily as they learn that their country has been turned into a neo-liberal plaything for the globalists. The energy sector has just been handed over to a suspect entity that is also seeking to control our airports in perpetuity. To hear that the government of Kenya can not manage transmission lines and that, as a result, foreign firms have to come in, confirms that our leaders are all too glad to become pawns in the theatre of dark global capitalism. There is, therefore, a nagging question: "Where do we go from here?" While this column cannot pretend to know precisely what we, the people, should do, I appreciate the timeless words of the scripture that "Where there is no vision, people perish". You know a country is devoid of vision, when it has lost its capacity to be good and decent. A decent country is one where the political class has deep appreciation of the human cost of their decisions. A cursory glance of the rush to shift from NHIF to SHIF, the new university funding model and the Adani deals in the Energy ministry and at the airport tell a different tale. That private pecuniary interest is the defining factor in policy-making in this country. That it does not matter if octogenarians are unable to access the much-needed dialysis care as long as some people make billions in the SHIF/SHA migration. That it does not matter if we have no well-thought-out plan to put a material dent on poverty and unemployment as long as the patronage networks are greased. What type of country are we building for the future generations? In a conversation, my mentor last week told me that when politicians accumulate primitively without fear of reprisal, they know they can use a fraction of the loot to buy political power till kingdom come. But he added a much more profound statement: There comes a time in the history of a nation when power and money are dissociated. When people are willing to trample on gold and silver in search of a higher ideal. A superior imagination. Is that the historical epoch we are in? Well after the disastrous years of Uhuru Kenyatta, the country was eager for a fresh start. The uncontested fact is the two leading presidential contenders in 2022 captured the imagination of the country in a powerful way. The feeling was that whichever side won, our moment for big ideas had come. So when Ruto was declared president, save for the ensuing political fallout, there was a feeling that our moment for a New Deal had come. The emerging reality is that we are dealing with different sides of the same coin. As such, we, the people must above all else develop our capacity for a new vision, lest we perish. We must ask ourselves if we will be proud, in 30 years, when our children will ask us what we were doing when our airport, among other strategic national assets, were being placed in the hands multinational corporations and their local agents, the comprador bourgeoisie. The critical first step is that, as a country, we are ripe for a 'viable alternative revolution'. That revolution must stop government programmes that take from the needy and give to the greedy. We can then look at the rear-view mirror and see the broken hopes and aspirations of generations past. Like Christ standing in a synagogue in Nazareth, as a generation we must say, the Spirit of the Lord is upon us. He has anointed us to proclaim good news to the captives. To proclaim recovery of sight for those assailed by psychological cataracts. For we are the ones who must proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord in Kenya.

Kenya is headed in the wrong direction; let's stop the descent

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