The Chant of Savant

Saturday 4 June 2022

Let's rotate the presidency on August 9

If you’ve sat in a barber’s chair, you know it’s on a swivel. It gives you the ability to see 360 degrees, if you need to. That’s not a mere luxury, or an inane invention. It’s a necessity for the barber and her clientele. If you want a good shave, the barber needs to manipulate your head every which way.

        Hence the swivel. Putting your head on a swivel means that you are alert and can respond to any emergent situation, like a sudden attack. The swivel is part of “combat” preparedness. States and nations aren’t different. They are always on the lookout for all enemies, domestic and foreign. That’s why intelligent states have their heads on a swivel.

            An intelligent state – as opposed to a dumb one – knows every blade of grass under its feet. That’s why “seeing like a state” means the ability to collect and digest inordinate amounts of information through surveillance and organisation. Some states know more about their nations than others. Usually, totalitarian states know more than democratic ones.

            Nineteen Eighty-Four, the dystopian novel by George Orwell, tells a tale of mass surveillance and control of the populace through the all-knowing party and state. Propaganda is a central tool of such a system.That’s antithetical to democracy, and it’s not what Kenya should ever aspire to. But the Kenyan state, nation, and its people need to know themselves better. Otherwise, the state and nation will fail.

Economic indices

   The process of nation building isn’t easy. What’s tragic is that Kenya has squandered most of its 58 years of independence doing very little to justify its existence. As former Prime Minister Raila Odinga likes to remind us, in 1964 Kenya and South Korea were on par on virtually all economic indices.

        Half a century later, the economy of South Korea is embarrassingly many times larger than Kenya’s. Its GDP is $1.9 trillion while Kenya’s is $100 billion. Its per capita income is $40,000 while Kenya’s is $3,500. The Koreans got it right while something went very wrong in Kenya. Kenyans and their leaders must hang their heads in shame. How could we fall so far behind? How?

        I have a theory. It’s not because we are stupid. It’s because we act stupidly. Of course there are other major reasons we aren’t cracking it. Let’s pick a few – the brutalities of enslavement and colonialism, the cruelty of the cold war, a scandalous global legal and economic order, and the vagaries of Mother Nature. But these “excuses” apply to all countries.

            Even the United States, the world’s most advanced nation, was colonised by the same Brits who put us under the imperial boot. The difference between Kenya, other impoverished countries, and developed ones includes what elites and their peoples are able to do for themselves. Governance and state legitimacy sit at the heart of that difference.

            Let me explain. Of course South Korea received massive investments from the US. But other Asian tigers didn’t. Of course South Korea wasn’t always a democracy. But once it became a democracy, it has been a damn good one. On the other hand, what have we done in Kenya? We’ve spent our time clawing back at our democratic institutions. Or not growing them.

            What have we done with Chapter Six of the Constitution? We’ve rendered it nugatory. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), the courts, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP), the Legislature are all feckless. Recently, courts decided to “suspend” the Constitution so criminal suspects can campaign “freely” for high office. Really? Even impeached governors are standing again! Crime pays, and does so handsomely, in Kenya.

    But most of all, we have refused to create a legitimate state. We herd our voters like animals into “tribes” and neuter them, robbing them of the brain function.

        That’s why all four of our heads of state have come from two communities – three from the Kikuyu nation and one from the Kalenjin nation. A state that produces such a result cannot perforce be legitimate, especially if it has over 45 communities. Nada.

State’s illegitimacy

This time round Central Kenya has taken a break but Kalenjinland is threatening to produce yet another head of state. If Kenya’s head was on a swivel, such a thing couldn’t happen. Electing another president from either of the two regions will further deepen the state’s illegitimacy.

            Kenyans were ecstatic when Senator Barack Obama, a Kenyan-American, was elected president of the world’s most powerful state. We didn’t celebrate merely because of Mr Obama’s Kenyan roots. No – we did so because justice was done to a people who’ve historically been left out and oppressed in America. A black man had become president of the United States for the first time in several hundred years of its existence.

         America became a more legitimate state on that day. In 2020, Kamala Harris became the first Black-South Asian and woman elected vice-president of the US. On August 9, Kenya needs to borrow a leaf from America. Let’s rotate the presidency.Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. @makaumutua

Source: Sunday Nation tomorrow.

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