Welcome to Kenya. Here we sanitize criminals, trivialize the atrocities they commit against us, then hand them the Presidency.

We then go back crying to God with our tails between our legs when they actively start to persecute us.

This is directed at you, fellow Kenyan citizen. You, who by sheer ignorance, voted for this crop of leaders. You, who in the thickness of your own indulgences, could not think beyond the fairy tale stories told to you by these so-called leaders. You, who continually accepts to be brainwashed by a political figure into becoming a mouthpiece for their lies and the hands to do their dirty bidding.

For President Ruto and his cabal is the problem. But you are the reason he is the problem. You gave him the guts, the will and most importantly, the power that has made him the problem.

Your ignorance has cost this country too much and for far too long. So sit tight and let me rebuke you for it.

Bad leaders or a mid-life crisis?

Back in 2022, Kenya was going through a mid-life crisis.

The political system felt stale. Dominated by the same crop of leaders, who with built out ‘dynasties’. A fresh wind of change was needed.

It felt much like a typical middle-aged man going through a mid-life crisis. The wife of his youth no longer as beautiful as she once was.

‘Time for an upgrade,’ he thinks to himself. A light-skinned woman, less than a third of his age, appears to be what he needs to reinvigorate his fountain of youth.

This was the choice that Kenyans faced at the ballot. Much like a light-skinned lady with a curvaceous body and a nice nyash leaves tongues wagging as she walks down the street, the promises to transform Kenya into ‘Africa’s Singapore’ were hard to ignore. On the other hand, an old hag whose only defense was the multitude of their many ‘sacrifices’ for the country. At the end of the day, the outcome was unsurprising.

Three years later, the truth is now out for all to see. Turns out the flashy appearance and the promises made to us on the ballot were all an illusion. Kenyans had been duped and catfished into believing a lie.

Yet again, the alarm bells had been sounding all along.

‘The light-skinned appearance was a mere make-up procedure. The face beneath was ugly and despicable to look at.’

Ghosts from the past

Did everyone suddenly get amnesia from what happened in 2007? How could we forget such a thing so quickly? How the country had been brought to a standstill when the same crop of politicians tore it apart, limb from limb, on the basis of tribal and ethnic ties. And how five years later, we forgave the same leaders and handed power over to them, ridiculing the international systems of justice that were handing out a deserved retribution.

I was about seven years old when the 2007/08 post-election violence broke out. My hometown was at one of the most intense hotbeds for the violence, and to date, some of the gruesome images I saw still give me nightmares.

I saw the violence happening from afar and a good distance away from it. Well, how about the thousands, if not millions who were murdered, maimed and/or lost their close relatives and properties to the violence?

The story of the 2007/08 is one that is often shoved under the carpet in modern political rhetoric, yet it marks one of the darkest chapters in Kenyan history. It surprises me that, as a country, we are so quick to forget. In fact, so much so that we keep reelecting the same instigators of the violence into the same, if not higher, political seats. And yet we are quick to complain when the systems of leadership and accountability fail, yet we have the power to decide what is right for us by placing the right people in power.

The hubris of human ignorance

However, one thing has come to mind for me of late. The issue of electing (surrendering power to) ‘great politicians but bad leaders’ into power is not merely a Kenyan problem, or an African one for that matter. It is a human problem.

Issues surrounding power – the misuse and the misappropiation of it – are as old as the idea of society itself. Let’s compare the idea of human society with that of an animal species with a similarly sophisticated social order – the Lion.

Lions are some of nature’s minority species that have a uniquely defined hierachical system of societal order. Each gender of the species has a uniquely defined role that is dependent on that of the opposite gender.

Female lions do most of the hunting and also take care of the young. The entire purpose of the male lion is to protect the pride. This often means fighting off intruders that threaten the well being of the pride. The female lions benefit by getting protection, which often means that they can focus on hunting and finding food for their young. On the other hand, the male lion gets exclusive mating rights with females in the pride that it protects.

However, here’s where nature kinda nerfs the whole system. Whenever a new male lion takes over a pride of another male lion that it has fought off and defeated, it’s first order business is to kill off all existing cubs. It then mates with the females to birth new cubs that are of it’s own genes.

There is a perhaps a deeper rooted reason for why this behavior exists that we may not necessarily have gained an understanding of.

Human beings are not any different. We have a defined system of power where we cede to the authority to those in leadership, which in most cases is through an established political system; democracies, autocracies, monarchies, you name it.

By surrendering to authority, we surrender our sovereignty as well. In other words, we give up the right to have absolute control over our lives to a system of laws and judicial procedure. These are meant to be under the control of a select few wizened individuals, who at still expected to remain accountable to all.

Why this exists follows thousands if not millions of years of human evolution and co-existence. The primordial nature of an individual human is to stand for his rights and needs for existence – even when that means fighting off anything that is perceived as a threat to this. In the words of Thomas Hobbes, a British scholar from the Middle Ages;

“Anarchy” with a state of nature—a hypothetical condition without a sovereign power—where life is a “war of all against all” characterized by competition, insecurity, and a perpetual fear of violent death.

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651) (paraphrased)

For Hobbes, this anarchic state is so intolerable that individuals willingly relinquish their natural freedom to a sovereign authority to establish peace, order, and security, making the sovereign a fundamental solution to the chaos of anarchy.

And much as female lions would rather surrender their needs for self protections and preservation to their male counterparts, we humans figured out that fully self-imposed authority and natural freedom is a tall order to figure out individually. We would rather have the more ‘wizened’ among figure it out, while we focus on more fundamental aspects of our lives, like putting food on the table.

However, here’s the mistake we make that is the bane of our existence. We often don’t do enough to establish whether the power we hand over goes into the hands of the right ‘male lions’. Power is sensitive and dangerous and in the words of Hobbes, is anarchic and representative of the state of war that human beings are often in.

Now imagine placing this power in the hands of people, who are no different in psychological nature to any of us and if anything, are even more irresponsible and ‘anarchic’ with it. Well then, there’s no need to imagine, it’s something we all do globally – hence why we are always teetering on the brink of going to war with each other.

It is as if we have surrendered to male lions, who don’t do their work in protecting the pride of our societies (see what I did there, *wink*wink*) but yet still eat up and kill our cubs (the fruits of our hard-earned work) the moment they get the chance to.