Opinion: Of realists, ideologues and political chaos

The late Koitalel Arap Samoei Photo:Courtesy

In politics, policy actors tend to be categorised as either realist or idealist. In between are ideologues and demagogues, dogmatic and fanatical people who make reason an irrelevancy as they plunge countries into chaos. Idealists keep the polity in perpetual upward motion.

Realists stabilise and maintain order in a state and provide an environment for idealists to dream. In contrast, ideologues tend to be destructive and robotic. Kenya has had all three. 

The realist/idealist categorisation, mostly a 20th Century phenomenon, arose out of post-World War I disillusionment. It was a product of an intellectual battle of two idealists, Woodrow Wilson of the United States and Russia’s Vladmir Lenin, both struggling to create their versions of “reality”. In using idealistic language to thwart realistic threats to long-term US interests, Wilson was both a realist and an idealist. The idealist was the realist.

REASON AND COMMON SENSE

Realists appear to deal with issues as they are rather than as they should be. Mostly university types and assorted intellectuals, idealists use reason and common sense to dream of how things should be and not what they are.

Like Socrates, they accept their knowledge gap and then look for more knowledge within the context of the polity in which the university finds itself. In the process, idealists easily find weaknesses in policies and structures within the existing reality. While some simply criticise and look for fault even where none exists, others offer alternatives to correct identified anomalies. They are expected to “think”, produce and spread knowledge but not to be robotic.

There are times when realism generates idealism as a counterforce. This is the case when the existing realism is oppressive and the result is the rise of idealists seeking to overthrow oppression reality.

Kenya, in its making, produced many such people and some were crude. The crude ones included such colonial idealists as Ewart Grogan, Charles Eliot, Lord Delamere, and Elspeth Huxley and they helped to create a “reality” called “White Man’s Country”.

That ideal was colonial paradise but its reality was oppression that produced its own anti-colonial idealists that were determined to create their own new reality. Renowned anti-colonial idealists included Mekatelili wa Menza, Koitalel Arap Samoei, Dedan Kimathi, Mbiyu Koinange, and Achieng Oneko. They transformed themselves into the ultimate realists for laying grounds for independent Kenya.

Post-colonial Kenya was idealistic in conception, manned by trained “realists”. This made Kenya appear to have an oversupply of annoying “realists”, those who deal with issues as they are rather than as they should be.

They are often “pragmatic” and mostly use “common sense” to seek ways out of tight corners. Many believe that it is not their business to remake the world, but simply to run it or thrive in it without concern over structural challenges.

Among the prominent political “realists” Charles Njonjo, Daniel Moi, James Otiende, Paul Ngei, and idealist turned realist Tom Mboya. And there were no-nonsense administrators Simeon Nyachae, John Michuki, and Charles Murgor. Later, Michuki operated on a belief that an elder sitting on a stool could see farther than boys on trees as he tamed the chaotic matatu transporters and cleaned up Nairobi River.

MOI THE REALIST

Moi was the “realist” who maneuvered his way into the presidency and inspired “idealists” demanding new post-colonial realities in constitutional rearrangements, culminating in the 2010 Constitution.

 Among the critics who poked holes in that new document was Mutahi Ngunyi, the idealist-realist, whose wry commentaries jolted many political minds. Some of the issues he raised about inherent mischief are currently dogging Kenya as ideologues undermine their own creation.

Mutahi’s fame, however, sky-rocketed in 2013 when, using simple social science, he baffled politicians with his “tyranny of numbers” analysis. He sounded annoyingly fresh to ideologues. 

Kenya has oversupplies of ideologues who are seemingly deluded that that Kenyans support plots to manufacture chaos, enjoy causing mayhem, and threaten national security and that they refuse to be normal. In refusing to reason and use common sense, they reject both idealism and realism.