Not Democracy but Kenyan Wallets on Trial

We should just delete the word democracy from the Kenyan narrative. Kenyans have no way of truly expressing and experiencing democratic values or space unless it is within the confines of their ethnicity. To a Kenyan, democracy is the ability to vote, and vote for your ethnic kingpin, as 93% of the voters demonstrated on March 4^th.

Well, yes, to a certain extent, it is indeed democratic to have the right to vote and exercise it, even the right to vote ethnically. However, true democracy should be rooted in values that carry weight for ALL citizens, and not values of exclusivity. It is this “winner takes all” mentality that has the country more socially fragmented than ever before. 50.07% of the votes cast went to the now president-elect. That makes only half of the country satisfied with their choice of president, leaving the other half entirely displeased with the outcome of the elections because this was not their choice. 

Kenyans are funny, we vote for a president and then when our preferred candidate wins, we act like we won, and when he loses we act like we lost. In an election, the voter doesn’t win or lose anything! Take these elections for example. We now have proudly and gallantly participated in creating the most expensive, bloated government we have ever had, one that will be expensive to run and expensive to maintain, and yet we are STILL a third world country. Yet somehow, people are celebrating a candidate’s win? It’s ridiculous.

What Kenyans need to do is to hunker down and get ready to work 5 times as hard for a third of their current wages, and receive next to no social amenities. After all, the purpose of the county governments is to make services more readily available to the people. But if the actions of the transitional government are anything to go by, then we can expect the very worst out of the incoming government. For starters, no one made the transitional authority god, such that they can decide to waste tax payers’ money in looking for lavish offices for the governors. It was a terrible start, and a clear sign that the backward mentality of according to public servants excesses at the expense of the citizen is truly entrenched and will always be a part of the system of government no matter how “decentralized” the government claims to be.

That “big man” syndrome is really at the heart of the problem in Kenya. It’s the African on African version of the collaborating Negro subservience to colonial masters. The “bwana Mkubwa” is always someone you voted for, who you believe can help you get out of your poverty, and so you worship him. It never occurs to the Kenyan that voting for Uhuru Kenyatta or Raila Odinga or any of the other presidential candidates was meant to be a hiring process for servants, not lords. 

Here is the greatest irony of these past elections. We spent 7 hours in the sun in order to vote in some of the richest people in our country so that we can then struggle under a great tax burden in order to pay them a hefty salary. Where in this process is our poverty deviated?

True democracy does not result in rich people getting richer off the backs of poor people; that is called SLAVERY. Yes. Slaves. Each one of us, slaves to the indignity and harm of ethnic politics and “winner takes all” mentality and worst of all, slaves to a process of endorsement that masquerades as an election.

Actually, perhaps we are worse off than mere slaves. After all, we worship our “masters”, rather than harbor a latent resentment and desire for freedom. Our slave worship is so bad we even have a defunct commission like the National Cohesion and Integration Commission to stand as a sort of speech prefect to track down hate mongers. Incidentally, not only is the NCIC completely incompetent as far as being able to even understand what hate speech is, they are also completely blind, choosing to threaten idle unemployed Kenyan youth on social media rather than institute charges against the true propagandists and peddlers of hate speech. Mzalendo Kibujia’s abject lack of sense results in prominent politicians clearly inciting their supporters to violence. 

Our democracy is not on trial, we don’t practice democracy anyway. It is our wallets that are on trial. We choose to enrich already rich, nay wealthy people by giving them top jobs while amongst ourselves we remain unemployed and indigent. Mark you, in 2017, we shall all come out in our millions and bake under the hot sun to do this; because, we worship the big man, and we practice ethnic politics and mainly because we are not just slaves, but dumb as rocks as well.