Kenya risks collapsing unless we get a grip, restore sanity

State House, Nairobi. [Photo: Courtesy]

They say a fish rots from the head down. I’ve written before – and reiterate here – that no state, or civilisation in history has ever achieved greatness without a great elite. This includes global hegemonies like the United States, China, France, or the United Kingdom. You can count tiny Singapore, South Korea, and Israel among the select few. In the Africa of yore, the Buganda Kingdom, the Zulu Empire, Ethiopia, Benin, Mali, Kongo, Ashante, and others come to mind. In contrast, the artificially invented – and imposed – Eurocentric African post-colonial state is a disaster. These humpty-dumpties yoyo between sterility and collapse. Kenya, once a promising beacon, has retarded to the “African norm.” Blame no one, but our putrid and bankrupt elite.

It gives no pleasure – in fact I am deeply pained – to pen this column. I say so because the collective failure, the malignancy, is our shared shame. It’s true that the white man gave us a poisoned chalice. He mutilated our souls and fed them to the proverbial devil. He planted culturally demonic chips in us. Every time we try to right the ship, the demon punches the self-destruct button, and puts us in reverse. A number of African states have reversed themselves all the way into obsolescence. Think Somalia, CAR, DRC, and others that have been revived from the dead like Uganda, Rwanda, and Liberia. Despair hangs in the air as our elites devour and eat their young.

Couldn’t govern

At the dawn of flag independence, the white man said that we couldn’t govern ourselves. We loudly protested and pulled out the race card. Then one by one African state after African state atrophied, or collapsed. The white man was right – and so were we. That’s because he had booby-trapped the state he gave us. Pick up a timed bomb and it will blow in your face. Our problem is that we didn’t detonate the bomb before picking it up. That’s what they’ve done in Singapore and Malaysia and are attempting to do in India, Brazil, and other emerging post-colonial states. In Africa, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere tried in Tanzania, but with arguably mixed results. In Kenya, we’ve failed.

Will the Raila Odinga-Uhuru Kenyatta “handshake” save us? In 2008, we escaped death as a country by a whisker. Since then, we’ve been on a slow death march. Truth be told, Kenya’s death march started when Mzee Jomo Kenyatta fell out with Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. Mwai Kibaki’s first term under Narc briefly interrupted our death spiral – but only momentarily. Under Jubilee, our national cancer has metastasized. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure this out. Corruption has infested our bone barrow. The national debt has exploded. We are deeply divided. Common decency has evaporated. Our school system is in the toilet. More than half our people are in a constant state of malnourishment. We are dying.

The state that’s supposed to take care of us – and our property – shouldn’t go rogue. Police shoot university students and their leaders in cold blood. A Kenyan is “deported.” Passports are impounded. Courts are disregarded. The rich have gotten obscenely rich. The poor and destitute have ceased to elicit even pity from their compatriots. But the elite troupes to church and mosque every week and bows their heads – and raises their palms upwards – like faithful penitents. We must ask this – what devils are they praying to? Even more chilling, what are they beseeching the lord to give them? This much we know – they’ve proven every Afro-pessimist right.  They’ve stopped pretending that we are one people bound by common destiny.

I am student of the relationship between the state and the citizen. That’s what I’ve mostly written and lectured about as a scholar. I’ve watched many an African state go over the cliff. But I’ve always held out studied hope that African states are simply not nonsense on stilts. We can stop them from collapsing into a heap.  But we’ve got to try first. In Asia and Latin America – where similar states abound – there’s some success at reversing collapse and decay. But this doesn’t happen by osmosis, or happenstance. Inter-elite calumny and moral bankruptcy aren’t a natural state. On February 27, the police executed Meru University student leader Evans Njoroge. Let’s start with that assassination to reverse our national decay.

Too painful

Many African states have collapsed. Even those that have come back haven’t been the same. My crystal ball tells me that Kenya is going to collapse unless we get a grip. But our elites – political, intelligentsia, civil society, and business – have to lead us back to sanity. We’ve been mad – insane – since the 1960s when Mr Odinga and Mzee Kenyatta fell asunder. We must recover. The alternative – a dystopia – is too painful to contemplate. Think Syria and wake up.

- Prof Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor at SUNY Buffalo Law School and Chair of KHRC.  @makaumutua.