Kenya's seven contradictions that turn justice into theatre daily

Deeds, Not Words, Count in the Fight Against Corruption

There is a particular kind of suffering that comes not from poverty alone, nor from violence alone, but from the persistent gap between what a nation professes and what it practises. Kenya does not merely have problems. Kenya has deep, structured, morally scandalous contradictions that have solidified into the ordinary furniture of public life. To name them is not pessimism. It is prophecy. And prophecy, in the biblical tradition, is always the first act of repair.

Amos did not come to Israel with statistics. He came with images of the merchant who falsifies the scales, the judge who takes bribes at the gate, the worshipper who sings loudly on the Sabbath, and defrauds the poor on Monday. The prophet's method is not abstraction; it is the naming of the specific contradiction. In that spirit, I offer seven.